Utilizing simulation approach, this paper examines if the income distribution inequality of a country expands through globalization and/or innovation, somewhat modifying the traditional Heckscher–Ohlin model. First, independently of innovation, the globalization is examined for a country A with two industries (commodities) and four consumers: the (aggregate) worker, the (aggregate) capitalist, ...

Existing research suggests that democracy fosters economic globalization by promoting trade liberalization in the developing world. We argue that democracy in developing countries generates a “skill bias” in trade protection where democratic incumbents have incentives to increase tariffs on high skilled goods but reduce trade barriers on low skilled goods. Our model analyzes how electoral compe...

This paper incorporates Northern product innovation and product-cycle-driven technology transfer into the continuum-of-goods Heckscher-Ohlin model. The creation of very skill-intensive goods induces the North to transfer production of older, less skill-intensive goods to the South. These relocated goods must be the most skill intensive by Southern standards. Thus, product cycles raise the relat...

We study the production side of the Heckscher–Ohlin model empirically. The evidence we present suggests that the endowments of countries around the world are too dissimilar for all countries to be able to produce the same set of goods. In contrast, the endowments of the rich OECD countries are sufficiently similar, so that these countries do not have to specialize in different subsets of goods....

Do rich and poor countries export the same goods to the US? Using highly disaggregate trade flow data – which breaks US imports into thousands rather than tens of goods – this paper documents two significant trends. First, the number of US imports originating in either rich or poor countries exclusively has fallen dramatically as the world has globalized, from 50% in 1972 to 25% in 1994. This g...

There are two principal theories of why countries or regions trade: comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale. Yet there is virtually no empirical work that assesses the relative importance of these two theories in accounting for production structure and trade. We use a framework that nests an increasing returns model of economic geography featuring “home market effects” with that o...

Division of labor models have become a standard analytical tool, along with competitive general equilibrium models (Ricardian, HOS, Ricardo-Viner), in public finance, trade, growth, development, and macroeconomics. Yet unlike the earlier models, specialization models lack a canonical representation. This is because they are both new and complex, characterized by multiple equilibria, instability...

Abstract The rise of top-heavy inequality—earnings concentration in a very thin layer elites—calls into question our understanding the distributional effects Liberal International Order. Far more people lose from globalization, and fewer gain, than traditional economic models suggest. We review three modern trade theories (neo-Heckscher-Ohlin-Stolper-Samuelson or H-O-S-S, new theory, geography)...

We assess the comparative advantage and protection of China’s major agricultural crops using a modified Policy Analysis Matrix (PAM) and 1996 to 1998 data. We consider the following commodities: early indica rice, late indica rice, japonica rice, south wheat, north wheat, south corn, north corn, sorghum, soybean, rapeseed, cotton, tobacco, sugarcane, and a subset of fruits and vegetables. Consi...