Evolving Patterns of International Trade

Essays on Patterns of International Trade

This paper investigates how the fraction of exporting firms among domestic firms in a country differs across industries, depending on the country’s comparative advantage. Although it is a known stylized fact that some firms export while others do not, the variation of the shares of exporters across industries, as well as across countries within the same industry, has been little explored. This ...

An Experimental Investigation of the Patterns of International Trade

Trade Arrangements and Evolving East Asian and Asia Pacific

The paper begins by noting that proposals involving significant developments in the regional tradearchitecture are being developed within regional processes that in some cases are simultaneouslypursuing other dimensions of regional economic integration: monetary and financial cooperation inthe case of ASEAN + 3, and the establishment of a common market in the case of ASEAN. At leastthree of the...

Patterns and Determinants of International Trade Costs in the Food

This paper documents patterns in international trade costs in processed foods for a large cross-section of developing and developed countries, during the 1976-2000 period. A trade costs index is inferred from a micro-founded gravity equation that incorporates bilateral ‘iceberg’ trade costs. For 2000, the weighted average tariff equivalent of trade costs ranges from 73% for the North to 134% fo...

Understanding International Trade Patterns: Advances of the 1990s

The first objective of the field of international trade is to understand why countries trade. Such a positive account of the origins of trade must precede policy analysis. The 1980s were dominated by a single major advance in thinking about trade patterns. It is sufficiently important that Krugman [1990] is justified in calling it a “quiet revolution”. Imperfect competition in product markets a...