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Putting Per-Capita Income back into Trade Theory

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  • Markusen, James R.

Abstract

A major role for per-capita income in international trade, as opposed to simply country size, was persuasively advanced by Linder (1961). Yet this crucial element of Linder’s story was abandon by most later trade economists in favor of the analytically-tractable but counter-empirical assumption that all countries share identical and homothetic preferences. This paper collects and unifies a number of disjoint points in the existing literature and builds further on them using simple and tractable alternative preferences. Adding non-homothetic preferences to a traditional models helps explain such diverse phenomenon as growing wage gaps, the mystery of the missing trade, home bias in consumption, and the role of intra-country income distribution, solely from the demand side of general equilibrium. With imperfect competition, we can explain higher markups and higher price levels in higher per-capita income countries, and the puzzle that gravity equations show a positive dependence of trade on per-capita incomes, aggregate income held constant. In all cases, the effects of growth are quite different depending on whether it is growth in productivity or through factor accumulation. The paper concludes with some suggestions for calibration, estimation, and gravity equations.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 7790.

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Date of creation: Apr 2010
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7790

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Keywords: gravity; missing trade; per-capita income; trade theory;

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References

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  1. Hakura, Dalia S., 2001. "Why does HOV fail?: The role of technological differences within the EC," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 361-382, August.
  2. Devashish Mitra & Vitor Trindade, 2003. "Inequality and Trade," NBER Working Papers 10087, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. David L. Hummels & Volodymyr Lugovskyy, 2008. "International pricing in a generalized model of ideal variety," Proceedings, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  4. Ina Simonovska, 2010. "Income differences and prices of tradables," Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Working Paper 55, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
  5. Jeffrey A. Frankel, 1998. "The Regionalization of the World Economy," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number fran98-1, October.
  6. Robert C. Feenstra & James R. Markusen & Andrew K. Rose, 2001. "Using the gravity equation to differentiate among alternative theories of trade," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 34(2), pages 430-447, May.
  7. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum & Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2009. "Income Distribution, Product Quality, and International Trade," NBER Working Papers 15329, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Markusen, James R. & Venables, Anthony J., 1988. "Trade policy with increasing returns and imperfect competition : Contradictory results from competing assumptions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3-4), pages 299-316, May.
  9. James Cassing & Shuichiro Nishioka, 2009. "Nonhomothetic Tastes and Missing Trade of Factor Services," Working Papers 09-03, Department of Economics, West Virginia University.
  10. Markusen, James R & Wigle, Randall M, 1990. "Explaining the Volume of North-South Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(403), pages 1206-15, December.
  11. Hallak, Juan Carlos, 2006. "Product quality and the direction of trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 238-265, January.
  12. Choi, Yo Chul & Hummels, David & Xiang, Chong, 2009. "Explaining import quality: The role of the income distribution," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 265-275, April.
  13. Markusen, James R, 1986. "Explaining the Volume of Trade: An Eclectic Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 1002-11, December.
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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Christian Hepenstrick, 2010. "Per-capita incomes and the extensive margin of bilateral trade," IEW - Working Papers 519, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
  2. Sophie Bernard & Louis Hotte & Stanley L. Winer, 2010. "Democracy, Inequality and the Environment when Citizens can Mitigate Privately or Act Collectively," CESifo Working Paper Series 3241, CESifo Group Munich.
  3. Diego Restuccia & Guillaume Vandenbroucke, 2011. "Explaining Educational Attainment across Countries and over Time," Working Papers tecipa-433, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
  4. Reto Foellmi & Christian Hepenstrick & Josef Zweimüller, 2010. "Non-homothetic preferences, parallel imports and the extensive margin of international trade," Diskussionsschriften dp1009, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
  5. Claudia Bernasconi, 2013. "Similarity of income distributions and the extensive and intensive margin of bilateral trade flows," ECON - Working Papers 115, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
  6. Kano, Kazuko & Kano, Takashi & Takechi, Kazutaka, 2013. "The Price of Distance: Producer Heterogeneity, Pricing to Market, and Geographic Barriers," Discussion Papers 2013-03, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.

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