Unequal Welfare Gains From Trade Across Countries: The Role of Aggregation and Income Elasticities

Hakan Yilmazkuday

International Economic Journal, 2023, vol. 37, issue 2, 137-176

Abstract: Sectoral heterogeneity has been shown to affect country-level welfare gains from trade (measured by costs of autarky) that can be calculated by sector-specific trade elasticities and home expenditure shares. However, empirical analyses of multi-sector models are restricted to a limited number of countries and sectors, mostly due to the lack of data on sector-specific home expenditure shares. This paper first proposes a solution to this limitation by changing the way that foreign products are aggregated at the destination country, where ‘unbiased’ multi-sector welfare gains can be captured by using country-specific trade elasticity measures. Second, the restrictive assumption of unitary importer-income elasticity is relaxed, and it is shown that the trade elasticity in the calculation of welfare gains is replaced by the newly-introduced welfare elasticity, a function of trade and income elasticities. Empirical evidence suggests that equal percentage changes in home expenditure shares result in unequal gains across countries depending on their elasticity measures.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1080/10168737.2023.2207847

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