Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/130691 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2014-12
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Chicago, IL
Abstract: 
We estimate productivities at the sector level for 72 countries and 5 decades, and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. In both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at greater comparative disadvantage. These changes have had a significant impact on trade volumes and patterns, and a non-negligible welfare impact. In the counterfactual scenario in which each country's comparative advantage remained the same as in the 1960s, and technology in all sectors grew at the same country-specific average rate, trade volumes would be higher, cross-country export patterns more dissimilar, and intra-industry trade lower than in the data. In this counterfactual scenario, welfare is also 1.6% higher for the median country compared to the baseline. The welfare impact varies greatly across countries, ranging from ..1.1% to +4.3% among OECD countries, and from ..4.6% to +41.9% among non-OECD countries.
Subjects: 
technological change
sectoral TFP
Ricardian models of trade
welfare
JEL: 
F11
F43
O33
O47
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
908.56 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.