What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas
The Ricardian model predicts that countries should produce and export relatively more in industries in which they are relatively more productive. Though one of the most celebrated insights in the theory of international trade, this prediction has received little attention in the empirical literature...
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Oxford University Press
2012
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72973 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5503-297X |
| _version_ | 1826217255549009920 |
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| author | Costinot, Arnaud Donaldson, David John Komunjer, Ivana |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics Costinot, Arnaud Donaldson, David John Komunjer, Ivana |
| author_sort | Costinot, Arnaud |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The Ricardian model predicts that countries should produce and export relatively more in industries in which they are relatively more productive. Though one of the most celebrated insights in the theory of international trade, this prediction has received little attention in the empirical literature since the mid-1960s. The main reason behind this lack of popularity is the absence of clear theoretical foundations to guide the empirical analysis. Building on the seminal work of Eaton and Kortum (“Technology, Geography, and Trade”, Econometrica, 70, 1741–1779 2002), we offer such foundations and use them to quantify the importance of Ricardian comparative advantage. In the process, we also provide a theoretically consistent alternative to Balassa's (1965, “An Empirical Demonstration of Classical Comparative Cost Theory”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 45, 231–238) well-known index of “revealed comparative advantage”. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:00:28Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/72973 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T17:00:28Z |
| publishDate | 2012 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/729732022-10-03T09:45:30Z What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas Costinot, Arnaud Donaldson, David John Komunjer, Ivana Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics Costinot, Arnaud Costinot, Arnaud Donaldson, David John The Ricardian model predicts that countries should produce and export relatively more in industries in which they are relatively more productive. Though one of the most celebrated insights in the theory of international trade, this prediction has received little attention in the empirical literature since the mid-1960s. The main reason behind this lack of popularity is the absence of clear theoretical foundations to guide the empirical analysis. Building on the seminal work of Eaton and Kortum (“Technology, Geography, and Trade”, Econometrica, 70, 1741–1779 2002), we offer such foundations and use them to quantify the importance of Ricardian comparative advantage. In the process, we also provide a theoretically consistent alternative to Balassa's (1965, “An Empirical Demonstration of Classical Comparative Cost Theory”, Review of Economics and Statistics, 45, 231–238) well-known index of “revealed comparative advantage”. 2012-09-14T18:28:28Z 2012-09-14T18:28:28Z 2011-09 2011-04 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0034-6527 1467-937X http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72973 Costinot, A., D. Donaldson, and I. Komunjer. “What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas.” The Review of Economic Studies 79.2 (2011): 581–608. Web. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5503-297X en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdr033 Review of Economic Studies Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ application/pdf Oxford University Press MIT web domain |
| spellingShingle | Costinot, Arnaud Donaldson, David John Komunjer, Ivana What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas |
| title | What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas |
| title_full | What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas |
| title_fullStr | What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas |
| title_full_unstemmed | What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas |
| title_short | What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo’s Ideas |
| title_sort | what goods do countries trade a quantitative exploration of ricardo s ideas |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72973 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5503-297X |
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