IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21984.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

International Trade with Indirect Additivity

Author

Listed:
  • Paolo Bertoletti
  • Federico Etro
  • Ina Simonovska

Abstract

We develop a general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition and trade based on indirectly additive preferences and heterogenous firms. It generates markups independent from destination population but increasing in destination per capita income, as documented empirically. Trade liberalization delivers an increase in consumed variety and incomplete cost pass-through. This leads to welfare gains that can be much lower than those predicted by comparable models with different preferences. We introduce a tractable utility function that further predicts that small firms grow more during trade liberalization and pass through cost changes more than do large firms. Once we estimate the model to match moments from cross-firm and cross-country data we (i) find quantitatively large differences in the welfare gains from trade relative to models based on homothetic preferences, and (ii) evaluate the gains and losses from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement.

Suggested Citation

  • Paolo Bertoletti & Federico Etro & Ina Simonovska, 2016. "International Trade with Indirect Additivity," NBER Working Papers 21984, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21984
    Note: DEV EFG IFM IO ITI
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21984.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Etro Federico, 2010. "Endogenous Market Structures and International Trade," Working Papers 2010_26, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    2. Feenstra, Robert C., 2018. "Restoring the product variety and pro-competitive gains from trade with heterogeneous firms and bounded productivity," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 16-27.
    3. Pablo Fajgelbaum & Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2011. "Income Distribution, Product Quality, and International Trade," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 119(4), pages 721-765.
    4. Feenstra, Robert C., 2003. "A homothetic utility function for monopolistic competition models, without constant price elasticity," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 79-86, January.
    5. Paolo Bertoletti & Federico Etro, 2018. "Monopolistic Competition with GAS Preferences," DEM Working Papers Series 165, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    6. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    7. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum & Francis Kramarz, 2011. "An Anatomy of International Trade: Evidence From French Firms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(5), pages 1453-1498, September.
    8. George Alessandria & Joseph P. Kaboski, 2011. "Pricing-to-Market and the Failure of Absolute PPP," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 91-127, January.
    9. Federico Etro, 2015. "Endogenous Market Structures and International Trade: Theory and Evidence," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 117(3), pages 918-956, July.
    10. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum, 2011. "Income Distribution, Product Quality and International Trade," 2011 Meeting Papers 415, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Anderson, James E, 1979. "A Theoretical Foundation for the Gravity Equation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 106-116, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/dambferfb7dfprc9m01g1j1k2 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Etro, Federico, 2017. "Research in economics and monopolistic competition," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 645-649.
    7. De Sousa, José & Disdier, Anne-Célia & Gaigné, Carl, 2020. "Export decision under risk," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    8. Federico Etro, 2018. "Macroeconomics with Endogenous Markups and Optimal Taxation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 85(2), pages 378-406, October.
    9. Francesco Di Comite & Jacques-François Thisse & Hylke Vandenbussche, 2011. "Verti-zontal differentiation in monopolistic competition," Working Paper Research 216, National Bank of Belgium.
    10. Behrens, Kristian & Murata, Yasusada, 2012. "Globalization and individual gains from trade," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(8), pages 703-720.
    11. Paolo Bertoletti & Federico Etro, 2022. "Monopolistic competition, as you like it," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(1), pages 293-319, January.
    12. Kichko, Sergei & Picard, Pierre M., 2023. "On the effects of income heterogeneity in monopolistically competitive markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    13. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2016. "Quality, trade, and exchange rate pass-through," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 61-80.
    14. Alexandru Manole & Ana Carp & Zoica Nicola & Marius Popovici, 2017. "Romania’s International Trade evolution analysis," Romanian Statistical Review Supplement, Romanian Statistical Review, vol. 65(3), pages 130-139, March.
    15. Etro, Federico, 2017. "The Heckscher–Ohlin model with monopolistic competition and general preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 26-29.
    16. Costinot, Arnaud & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2014. "Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 197-261, Elsevier.
    17. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum & Amit K. Khandelwal, 2016. "Measuring the Unequal Gains from Trade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(3), pages 1113-1180.
    18. Raphael A. Auer, 2013. "Product Heterogeneity, Cross-Country Taste Differences, and the Consumption Home Bias," Working Papers 13.01, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    19. Anne‐Célia Disdier & Carl Gaigné & Cristina Herghelegiu, 2023. "Do standards improve the quality of traded products?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(4), pages 1238-1290, November.
    20. Suwanprasert Wisarut, 2019. "Endogenous Markup, Per Capita Income and Population Size in the Gravity Equation," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 1-16, June.
    21. Kiminori Matsuyama, 2019. "Engel's Law in the Global Economy: Demand‐Induced Patterns of Structural Change, Innovation, and Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(2), pages 497-528, March.
    22. Raphael Auer, 2009. "Product Heterogeneity, Within-Industry Trade Patterns, and the Home Bias of Consumption?," Working Papers 09.05, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    23. Adina Ardelean & Volodymyr Lugovskyy, 2015. "Technology, Trade, and Quality Slopes," CAEPR Working Papers 2015-004, Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research, Department of Economics, Indiana University Bloomington.
    24. Osharin, Alexander & Thisse, Jacques-François & Ushchev, Philip & Verbus, Valery, 2014. "Monopolistic competition and income dispersion," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 348-352.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21984. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.