IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-01470696.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The International Elasticity Puzzle Is Worse Than You Think

Author

Listed:
  • Lionel Fontagné

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales - Centre d'analyse stratégique)

  • Philippe Martin

    (ECON - Département d'économie (Sciences Po) - Sciences Po - Sciences Po - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Gianluca Orefice

    (CEPII - Centre d'Etudes Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales - Centre d'analyse stratégique)

Abstract

We estimate three international price elasticities using exporters data: the elasticity of firm exports to export price, tariff and real exchange rate shocks. In standard trade and international macroeconomics models these three elasticities should be equal. We find that this is far from being the case. We use French firm level electricity costs to instrument for export prices and provide a first estimate of the elasticity of firm-level exports to export prices. The elasticity of exports is highest, around 5, for export prices followed by tariffs, around 2, and is lowest for the real exchange rate, around 0.6. The large discrepancy between these elasticities makes us conclude that the international elasticity puzzle is actually worse than previously thought. Moreover, we show that because exporters absorb part of tariffs and exchange rate movements, estimates of export elasticities that do not take into account export prices are biased.

Suggested Citation

  • Lionel Fontagné & Philippe Martin & Gianluca Orefice, 2017. "The International Elasticity Puzzle Is Worse Than You Think," Working Papers hal-01470696, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-01470696
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01470696
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01470696/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bas, Maria & Mayer, Thierry & Thoenig, Mathias, 2017. "From micro to macro: Demand, supply, and heterogeneity in the trade elasticity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-19.
    2. Sharat Ganapati & Joseph S. Shapiro & Reed Walker, 2016. "Energy Prices, Pass-Through, and Incidence in U.S. Manufacturing," Working Papers 16-27, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. Nicolas Berman & Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer, 2012. "How do Different Exporters React to Exchange Rate Changes?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 127(1), pages 437-492.
    4. Lukasz A. Drozd & Jaromir B. Nosal, 2012. "Understanding International Prices: Customers as Capital," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 364-395, February.
    5. Antoine Berthou & Lionel Fontagné, 2016. "Variable Trade Costs, Composition Effects and the Intensive Margin of Trade," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1), pages 54-71, January.
    6. Costas Arkolakis & Arnaud Costinot & Andres Rodriguez-Clare, 2012. "New Trade Models, Same Old Gains?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(1), pages 94-130, February.
    7. Piveteau, Paul & Smagghue, Gabriel, 2019. "Estimating firm product quality using trade data," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 217-232.
    8. Arnaud Costinot & Dave Donaldson & Ivana Komunjer, 2012. "What Goods Do Countries Trade? A Quantitative Exploration of Ricardo's Ideas," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 581-608.
    9. Robert C. Feenstra & Philip Luck & Maurice Obstfeld & Katheryn N. Russ, 2018. "In Search of the Armington Elasticity," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(1), pages 135-150, March.
    10. Houssein Guimbard & Sébastien Jean & Mondher Mimouni & Xavier Pichot, 2012. "MAcMap-HS6 2007, an Exhaustive and Consistent Measure of Applied Protection in 2007," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 130, pages 99-122.
    11. Doireann Fitzgerald & Stefanie Haller, 2014. "Exporters and Shocks: Dissecting the International Elasticity Puzzle," Working Papers 201408, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    12. repec:cii:cepiei:2012-q2-130-5 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Keith Head & John Ries, 2001. "Increasing Returns versus National Product Differentiation as an Explanation for the Pattern of U.S.-Canada Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 858-876, September.
    14. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    15. Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), 2014. "Handbook of International Economics," Handbook of International Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 4, number 4.
    16. Kim J. Ruhl, 2008. "The International Elasticity Puzzle," Working Papers 08-30, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    17. De Loecker, Jan & Van Biesebroeck, Johannes, 2016. "The effect of international competition on firm productivity and market power," CEPR Discussion Papers 11114, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Xavier Jaravel, 2016. "The Unequal Gains from Product Innovations," 2016 Meeting Papers 437, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agnès Bénassy‐Quéré & Matthieu Bussière & Pauline Wibaux, 2021. "Trade and currency weapons," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 487-510, August.
    2. Bruno Ducoudre & Xavier Timbeau & Sébastien Villemot, 2018. "The magnitude of euro area misalignments in 2017," PSE Working Papers hal-03389334, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fontagné, Lionel & Martin, Philippe & Orefice, Gianluca, 2018. "The international elasticity puzzle is worse than you think," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 115-129.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3lmdaefcr886ao8sahjmam30ke is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Lionel Fontagné & Philippe Martin & Gianluca Orefice, 2017. "The International Elasticity Puzzle Is Worse Than You Think," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-01470696, HAL.
    4. Fontagné, Lionel & Martin, Philippe & Orefice, Gianluca, 2018. "The international elasticity puzzle is worse than you think," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 115-129.
    5. Bas, Maria & Mayer, Thierry & Thoenig, Mathias, 2017. "From micro to macro: Demand, supply, and heterogeneity in the trade elasticity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-19.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/nki2gcedn93280ns6fslbhdnm is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    8. A. Berthou & E. Dhyne, 2018. "Exchange Rate Movements, Firm-Level Exports and Heterogeneity," Working papers 660, Banque de France.
    9. Shon M. Ferguson & Aaron Smith, 2022. "Import demand elasticities based on quantity data: Theory and evidence," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(2), pages 1027-1056, May.
    10. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Clément Malgouyres & Thierry Mayer, 2018. "Exports and labor costs: evidence from a French policy," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 154(3), pages 429-454, August.
    12. Christoph E. Boehm & Andrei A. Levchenko & Nitya Pandalai-Nayar, 2020. "The Long and Short (Run) of Trade Elasticities," NBER Working Papers 27064, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2017. "Unifying Macro Elasticities in International Economics," Globalization Institute Working Papers 299, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    15. Stephen J. Redding & David E. Weinstein, 2019. "Aggregation and the Gravity Equation," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 109, pages 450-455, May.
    16. Bas, Maria & Mayer, Thierry & Thoenig, Mathias, 2017. "From micro to macro: Demand, supply, and heterogeneity in the trade elasticity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 1-19.
    17. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/juegcqdoe81pq2u57eide0qm5 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Maria Bas & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2017. "From Micro to Macro: Demand, Supply, and Heterogeneity in the Trade Elasticity," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-02483306, HAL.
    19. Maria Bas & Thierry Mayer & Mathias Thoenig, 2015. "From Micro to Macro: Demand, Supply, and Heterogeneity in the Trade Elasticity," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-01592899, HAL.
    20. Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2019. "Understanding the international elasticity puzzle," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 140-153.
    21. Stephen J. Redding & David E. Weinstein, 2017. "Aggregating from Micro to Macro Patterns of Trade," NBER Working Papers 24051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Rodrigo Adão & Costas Arkolakis & Sharat Ganapati, 2020. "Aggregate Implications of Firm Heterogeneity: A Nonparametric Analysis of Monopolistic Competition Trade Models," Working Papers 2020-161, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    23. Berthou, Antoine & Mayer, Thierry & Mésonnier, Jean-Stéphane, 2021. "Good connections : bank specialization and the tariff elasticity of exports," CEPR Discussion Papers 15890, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    24. Costinot, Arnaud & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2014. "Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 197-261, Elsevier.
    25. French, Scott, 2016. "The composition of trade flows and the aggregate effects of trade barriers," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 114-137.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    international elasticity puzzle; export prices; Elasticity; International Trade and Macroeconomics; Export Price; Firm exports;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hal:wpaper:hal-01470696. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.