International politics affects oil trade. But why? We construct a firm-level dataset for all U.S. oil-importing companies over 1986-2008 to examine what kinds of firms are more responsive to change in "political distance" between the U.S. and her trading partners, measured by divergence in their UN General Assembly voting patterns. Consistent with previous macro evidence, we first show that individual firms diversify their oil imports politically, even after controlling for unobserved firm heterogeneity. We conjecture that the political pattern of oil imports from these individual firms is driven by hold-up risks, because oil trade is often associated with backward vertical FDI. To test this hold-up risk hypothesis, we investigate heterogeneity in responses by matching transaction-level import data with firm-level worldwide reserves. Our results show that long-run oil import decisions are indeed more elastic for firms with oil reserves overseas than those without, although the reverse is true in the short run. We interpret this empirical regularity as that while firms trade in the spot market can adjust their imports immediately, vertically-integrated firms with investment overseas tend to commit to term contracts in the short run even though they are more responsive to changes in international politics in the long run.
権利
Copyrights 日本貿易振興機構（ジェトロ）アジア経済研究所 / Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization (IDE-JETRO) http://www.ide.go.jp
雑誌名
IDE Discussion Paper
雑誌名(英)
IDE Discussion Paper
巻
458
発行年
2014-02-01
出版者
Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO)
著者版フラグ
publisher
日本十進分類法
678
JEL分類
JEL:F13 - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
JEL:F51 - International Conflicts; Negotiations; Sanctions
JEL:F59 - International Relations and International Political Economy: Other
JEL:Q34 - Natural Resources and Domestic and International Conflicts
地域/国名
アメリカ合衆国
キーワード(LSH)
United States
International trade
International relatiolns
Petroleum industry
Imports
Foreign investments
Energy resources
International politics
FDI-based imports
Hold-up risk
Energy security
Why do oil importers diversify their import sources politically? : evidence from U.S. firm-level data
本文
(286.03KB)
