The income elasticity of import demand: Micro evidence and Cheek for an application

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hummels, David; Lee, Kwan Yong
• 署名单位: Purdue University System; Purdue University; University of North Dakota Grand Forks
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2018.04.001
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 20-34
• 关键词: Income elasticity; Income distribution; Import demand; Great Trade Collapse

摘要

We construct a synthetic panel of household expenditures from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) and use the Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System to estimate expenditure shares and income elasticities of demand that vary by good-time-income. We show that the size and distribution of income shocks drives expenditure change in a manner that varies profoundly across traded goods. Our estimates of expenditure shares and income elasticities could be useful in many applications that seek to explain changes in trade behavior from the demand side, and indicate the strong sensitivity of trade to changes in the tails of the income distribution. We explore an application involving the Great Trade Collapse. Income-induced expenditure changes are positively correlated with the cross-good pattern of import changes, generating a predicted change as much as 40% as large as the raw variation in import declines. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.