The US Gains from Trade: Valuation Using the Demand for Foreign Factor Services

Arnaud Costinot and Andres Rodriguez-Clare

No 24407, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: About 8 cents out of every dollar spent in the United States is spent on imports. What if, because of a wall or some other extreme policy intervention, imports were to remain on the other side of the US border? How much would US consumers be willing to pay to prevent this hypothetical policy change from taking place? The answer to this question represents the welfare cost from autarky or, equivalently, the welfare gains from trade. In this article, we discuss how to evaluate these gains using the demand for foreign factor services. The estimates of gains from trade for the US economy that we review range from 2 to 8 percent of GDP.

JEL-codes: F10 F11 F12 F14 F15 F17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
Note: ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

Published as Arnaud Costinot & Andrés Rodríguez-Clare, 2018. "The US Gains From Trade: Valuation Using the Demand for Foreign Factor Services," Journal of Economic Perspectives, vol 32(2), pages 3-24.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24407.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The US Gains from Trade: Valuation Using the Demand for Foreign Factor Services (2018)
Working Paper: The US Gains From Trade: Valuation Using the Demand for Foreign Factor Services (2018)
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:nbr:nberwo:24407

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24407

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().