 Goods-market frictions and international tradePawel Krolikowski and Andrew H. McCallum Journal of International Economics, 2021, vol. 129, issue C Abstract: We add goods-market frictions to a general equilibrium dynamic model with heterogeneous exporting producers and identical importing retailers. Our tractable framework leads to endogenously unmatched product varieties that reduce welfare, attenuate welfare responses, increase the responsiveness of trade to iceberg costs, and operate mainly through the extensive margin. Quantitative results based on U.S. and Chinese data suggest that reducing international search costs to their domestic levels raises U.S. and Chinese welfare by 5.6% and 4%, respectively. A model with search frictions attenuates ex-ante welfare responses by 85% and changes the trade elasticity from −3.2 to −5.5 relative to a model without search frictions. The trade elasticity with respect to search costs is −0.7 and search frictions make the intensive and extensive margins of trade with respect to variable costs about equally important. Our framework provides a baseline for analyzing the aggregate implications of search frictions in models of trade. Keywords: Search; Welfare; Trade elasticity; Constrained optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:inecon:v:129:y:2021:i:c:s0022199620301264 DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103411 Access Statistics for this article Journal of International Economics is currently edited by Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier and RodrÃguez-Clare, Andrés More articles in Journal of International Economics from Elsevier |
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