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What drives cross-country differences in export variety? A bilateral panel approach

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  • Parteka, Aleksandra

Abstract

A worldwide event like the 2020 Coronavirus outbreak can only reinforce the interest in modelling trade diversification as a key factor in countries’ vulnerability to external shocks. This paper adopts a detailed relative framework to study the determinants of product-level export variety in a large bilateral panel of developing and developed economies (16,770 country pairs in the period 1988–2014). We find that country pairs characterized by large differentials in productivity and in the makeup of the labour force differ in export variety patterns. This result holds after controlling for other endowments and for trade costs. Further, productivity plays a significant role in the reduction of export variety dissimilarities between countries belonging to different income groups. Hence, without successful technological convergence the low-income economies will not be able to reduce their exposure to export risk.

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  • Parteka, Aleksandra, 2020. "What drives cross-country differences in export variety? A bilateral panel approach," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 48-56.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecmode:v:92:y:2020:i:c:p:48-56
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econmod.2020.07.001
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Export variety; Export diversification; Bilateral panel; Trade;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F43 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Economic Growth of Open Economies
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models

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