Published Papers 2019-23
Growth and Trade with Frictions
Latent Exports: Almost Ideal Gravity and Zeros, Review of Economics & Statistics, forthcoming
Back to the Future: Gravity at Sixty
Unpublished Papers
Abstract
‘Effective’ tariff index comparisons are spotlighted in media reports on trade wars and trade talks. Deficiency in the index used for comparisons misleads public opinion and policy makers. We offer an import volume equivalent uniform tariff index to replace the import-weighted average ‘effective’ tariff. Its share weights embody their general equilibrium dependence on all country and product tariffs. Reciprocal reductions in the indexes are: (i) consistent with the objective of reciprocal exchange of market access, and (ii) decompose into the product of buyer and seller incidences of tariffs that reflect domestic political economy objectives.
Quantifying the Extensive Margin(s) of Trade
Commercial Rivalry as Seller Incidence Shifting: Non-parametric Accounting of the China Shock
Abstract
Intense commercial rivalry in manufacturing is quantified in this paper by novel non-parametric gravity sufficient statistics. Trade cost incidence on sellers falls with own sales while others’ seller incidence rises on average. China’s manufacturing seller incidence falls 8.2% yearly as China’s sales share quadruples over 2000-14. US seller incidence rises 6.3% yearly as US sales share halves. Industrial policy that raises US (China) 2014 sales share 10% reduces seller incidence 9.74% (10.05%). A trade elasticity equal to one closely fits non-parametric terms of trade statistics to CES gravity-predicted domestic trade shares. Trade elasticities identified off variation in observable buyer prices or trade costs are biased upward by omitted variation in unobservable buyer frictions.
Exchange Rates as Trade Frictions: Estimates and Policy Implications
Abstract
This paper improves on current treatment of exchange rate variation in quantitative trade models. Exchange rate changes with heterogeneous passthrough to buyers are embedded in the structural gravity model. Quantification on two digit annual bilateral trade data reveals real effects of exchange rate changes on producers that are substantial for some country-sector-time period observations. Real national income effects are small but not always negligible. Effective exchange Rates with Gravitas (ERGs) are introduced as theory-consistent indexes to guide potential policy remedies.
Software
software and data for gravity incidence
software to estimate gravity
software to calculate the TR