Elasticity Optimism

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Imbs, Jean; Mejean, Isabelle
• 署名单位: Paris School of Economics; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; Ecole Polytechnique
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MACROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7707
• DOI: 10.1257/mac.20130231
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 43-83
• 关键词: price elasticities; TRADE; income

摘要

On average, estimates of trade elasticities are smaller in aggregate data than at sector level. This is an artifact of aggregation. Estimations performed on aggregate data constrain sector elasticities to homogeneity, which creates a heterogeneity bias. The paper shows such a bias exists in two prominent approaches used to estimate elasticities, which has meaningful consequences for the calibration of the trade elasticity in one-sector, aggregative models. With elasticities calibrated to aggregate data, macroeconomic models can have predictions at odds with the implications of their multi-sector counterparts. They do not when elasticities are calibrated using a weighted average of sector elasticities.