Trade and Sectoral Productivity

Harald Fadinger and Pablo Fleiss

No 2008_005, Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles

Abstract: Even though differences in sectoral total factor productivity are at the heart of Ricardian trade theory and many models of growth and development, very little is known about their size and their form. In this paper we try to fill this gap by using a Hybrid-Ricardo-Heckscher-Ohlin trade model and bilateral sectoral trade data to overcome the data problem that has limited previous studies, which have used input and output data to back out productivities, to a small number of OECD economies. We provide a comparable set of sectoral productivities for 24 manufacturing sectors and more than sixty countries at all stages of development. Our results show that TFP differences in manufacturing sectors between rich and poor countries are substantial and far more pronounced in skill and R&D intensive sectors. We also apply our productivity estimates to test theories on development that have implications for the patterns of sectoral productivities across countries.

Keywords: Sectoral Productivity Differences; Trade and Production Data; Ricardo; Heckscher-Ohlin; Comparative Advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F11 F43 O11 O41 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 79 p.
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff, nep-int and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published by:

Downloads: (external link)
https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/5407 ... _wpaper_2008_005.pdf RePEc_eca_wpaper_2008_005 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Trade and Sectoral Productivity (2011)
Working Paper: Trade and Sectoral Productivity (2008)
Working Paper: Trade and Sectoral Productivity (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eca:wpaper:2008_005

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://hdl.handle.ne ... ulb.ac.be:2013/54073

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers ECARES from ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benoit Pauwels ().