Measured Aggregate Gains from International Trade

A Study in the Distribution of Gains from International Trade

A Study in the Distributions of Gains From International Trade

Habit Persistence and Welfare Gains from International Asset Trade

We introduce habit formation in a model that studies the link between international trade in financial assets, economic growth, and welfare. As with time separable preferences asset trade increases the mean growth rate, but it also increases growth-volatility. We demonstrate that the welfare gain from asset trade is lower with habit persistence in consumption. This reflects that the habit-formi...

International Trade when Inequality Determines Aggregate Demand

In this paper we model the pattern of international trade, and technological innovation and imitation between industrialized and developing regions, when preferences are nonhomothetic. By and large, models of the dynamics of North-South trade impose the assumption of unit income elasticity for all consumption goods. We relax this assumption and incorporate the insight from Engel’s Law: The budg...

Measurable Dynamic Gains from Trade

Volatility, Insurance, and the Gains from Trade∗

By reducing the negative correlation between local prices and productivity shocks, trade liberalization changes the volatility of returns. In the context of agriculture in developing countries—where production is risky, producers are risk averse, and insurance markets are incomplete—this change in volatility may have large welfare effects. In this paper, we empirically, analytically, and quanti...