Can we identify Balassa-Samuelson effects with measures of product variety?

Richard Frensch () and Achim Schmillen

No 288, Working Papers from Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies)

Abstract: The Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis – i.e. that real exchange rates between each pair of countries increase with the tradables sector productivities ratio between these countries, and decrease with their non-tradables sector productivities ratio – has been one of the most prominent frameworks in open economy macroeconomics for more than forty years. However, empirical studies have often been unable to confirm it. We argue that this might at least in part be due to measurement errors leading to downward-biased estimates. We test the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis with innovative trade-based vari-ety measures to differentiate between tradables and non-tradables sector productivities that do not suffer from such errors-in-variables. Using a pairwise regression approach, we find stable and very robust Balassa-Samuelson effects over all our specifications.

Keywords: Balassa-Samuelson; product variety; measurement errors; pairwise regressions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F40 F43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24
Date: 2010-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-opm
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Can we identify Balassa-Samuelson effects with measures of product variety? (2011)
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