Revealed comparative advantage: What is it good for?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: French, Scott
• 署名单位: University of New South Wales Sydney
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2017.02.002
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 83-103
• 关键词: Relative productivity; index; Ricardian; Trade barriers; Trade policy; Trade elasticity

摘要

This paper applies a widely-used class of quantitative trade models to evaluate the usefulness of measures of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) in academic and policy analyses. I find that, while commonly-used indexes are generally not consistent with theoretical notions of comparative advantage, certain indexes can be usefully employed for certain tasks. I explore several common uses of RCA indexes and show that different indexes are appropriate when attempting to (a) uncover countries' fundamental patterns of comparative advantage, (b) evaluate the differential effect of changes in trade barriers across producers of different products, or (c) identify countries who are relatively close competitors in a given market. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.