IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v121y2006i2p541-585..html

Globalization and the Gains From Variety

Author

Listed:
  • Christian Broda
  • David E. Weinstein

Abstract

Since the seminal work of Krugman, product variety has played a central role in models of trade and growth. In spite ofthe general use oflove-of-variety models, there has been no systematic study of how the import of new varieties has contributed to national welfare gains in the United States. In this paper we show that the unmeasured growth in product variety from U. S. imports has been an important source of gains from trade over the last three decades (1972–2001). Using extremely disaggregated data, we show that the number of imported product varieties has increased by a factor of three. We also estimate the elasticities of substitution for each available category at the same level of aggregation, and describe their behavior across time and SITC industries. Using these estimates, we develop an exact aggregate price index and find that the upward bias in the conventional import price index over this time period was 28 percent or 1.2 percentage points per year. We estimate the value to U. S. consumers of the expanded import varieties between 1972 and 2001 to be 2.6 percent of GDP.

Suggested Citation

  • Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2006. "Globalization and the Gains From Variety," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 541-585.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:121:y:2006:i:2:p:541-585.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/qjec.2006.121.2.541
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F02 - International Economics - - General - - - International Economic Order and Integration
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:121:y:2006:i:2:p:541-585.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.