Bio

Walter Steingress is a Senior Economist in the International Studies Division of the International Department. His primary interests lie within the field of international macroeconomics. Walter’s other research interests include migration and international trade. Before joining the Bank of Canada, Walter held an appointment at the Bank of France. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Montreal and holds a master’s degree from Boston University.

Research Fields: Applied Econometrics International Trade and Finance Migration
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Staff Discussion Papers

Product Sophistication and the Slowdown in Chinese Export Growth

Staff Discussion Paper 2017-15 Mark Kruger, Walter Steingress, Sri Thanabalasingam
Chinese real export growth decelerated considerably during the last decade. This paper argues that the slowdown largely resulted from China moving to a more sophisticated mix of exports: China produced more sophisticated goods over which it had pricing power instead of producing greater volumes of less sophisticated products.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff discussion papers Topic(s): Development economics, Exchange rates, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F1, F14, F17, O, O1, O10

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Staff Working Papers

No Double Standards: Quantifying the Impact of Standard Harmonization on Trade

Staff Working Paper 2019-36 Julia Schmidt, Walter Steingress
Product standards are omnipresent in industrialized societies. Though standardization can be beneficial for domestic producers, divergent product standards have been categorized as a major obstacle to international trade. This paper quantifies the effect of standard harmonization on trade flows and characterizes the extent to which it changes the cost and demand structure of exporting.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F1, F13, F14, F15, L, L1, L15

Estimating the Effect of Exchange Rate Changes on Total Exports

Staff Working Paper 2019-17 Thierry Mayer, Walter Steingress
This paper shows that real effective exchange rate (REER) regressions, the standard approach for estimating the response of aggregate exports to exchange rate changes, imply biased estimates of the underlying elasticities. We provide a new aggregate regression specification that is consistent with bilateral trade flows micro-founded by the gravity equation.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Econometric and statistical methods, Exchange rates, International topics JEL Code(s): F, F1, F11, F12, F3, F31, F32

Market Size and Entry in International Trade: Product Versus Firm Fixed Costs

Staff Working Paper 2018-43 Walter Steingress
This paper develops a theoretical framework to infer the nature of fixed costs from the relationship between entry patterns in international markets and destination market size. If fixed costs are at the firm level, firms take advantage of an intrafirm spillover by expanding firm-level product range (scope).
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Firm dynamics, International topics, Trade integration JEL Code(s): F, F1, F12, F14, F2, F23

The Political Impact of Immigration: Evidence from the United States

Staff Working Paper 2018-19 Anna Maria Mayda, Giovanni Peri, Walter Steingress
In this paper we study the impact of immigration to the United States on the vote for the Republican Party by analyzing county-level data on election outcomes between 1990 and 2010. Our main contribution is to separate the effect of high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants, by exploiting the different geography and timing of the inflows of these two groups of immigrants.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Labour markets JEL Code(s): F, F2, F22, J, J6, J61

The Causal Impact of Migration on US Trade: Evidence from Political Refugees

Staff Working Paper 2017-49 Walter Steingress
Immigrants can increase international trade by shifting preferences towards the goods of their country of origin and by reducing bilateral transaction costs. Using geographical variation across U.S. states for the period 2008 to 2013, I estimate the respective causal impact of immigrants on U.S. exports and imports.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): International topics, Regional economic developments JEL Code(s): F, F1, F14, F2, F22, J, J6, J61

Global Trade Flows: Revisiting the Exchange Rate Elasticities

Staff Working Paper 2017-41 Matthieu Bussière, Guillaume Gaulier, Walter Steingress
This paper contributes to the debate on the magnitude of exchange rate elasticities by providing a set of price and quantity elasticities for 51 advanced and emerging-market economies. Specifically, for each of these countries we report the elasticity of trade prices and trade quantities on both the export and on the import sides, as well as the reaction of the trade balance.
Content Type(s): Staff research, Staff working papers Topic(s): Exchange rates, Inflation and prices, International topics JEL Code(s): C, C5, C51, F, F1, F14, F3, F31, F33, F4, F41

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Journal Publications

Refereed journal

  • “Estimating the effect of exchange rate changes on total exports” (2019) joint with Thierry Mayer – accepted at Journal of International Money and Finance
  • “Global Trade Flows: Revisiting the Exchange Rate Elasticities” (2019) joint with Matthieu Bussière and Guillaume Gaulier – accepted at Open Economies Review
  • “Entry barriers to international trade: product versus firm fixed costs” (2019) Review of International of Economics, Vol. 27(5), p 1351-1370
  • “The causal effect of migration on US trade: Evidence from Political Refugees (2018), Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 51(4), p. 1312-1338
  • “Financial Constraints in China: firm-level evidence” (2010) China Economic Review, Vol. 21(3), p. 411–422 joint with Sandra Poncet and Hylke Vandenbussche