Trade barriers and the relative price of tradables

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sposi, Michael
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Dallas
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2015.02.003
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 398-411
• 关键词: relative prices; Tradables; Nontradables; Trade barriers

摘要

In this paper I quantitatively address the role of trade barriers in explaining why prices of services relative to tradables are positively correlated with levels of development across countries. I argue that trade barriers play a crucial role in shaping the cross-country pattern of specialization across many tradable goods. I construct a multi-country, general equilibrium model of trade and derive tractable predictions that show how specialization affects relative prices. I calibrate the model to match the patterns of prices, levels of development, and bilateral trade across 103 countries. Through counterfactuals I find that removing trade barriers eliminates more than half of the gap in the relative price of services between rich and poor countries with only a minimal systematic effect on the absolute price of tradables. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.