Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns

William Kerr

The World Bank Economic Review, 2018, vol. 32, issue 1, 163-182

Abstract: Migration and trade are often linked through ethnic networks boosting bilateral trade. This study uses migration to quantify the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade. The framework provides the first panel estimates connecting country-industry productivity and exports, and the study exploits heterogeneous technology diffusion from immigrant communities in the United States for identification. The latter instruments are developed by combining panel variation on the development of new technologies across US cities with historical settlement patterns for migrants from countries. The instrumented elasticity of export growth on the intensive margin with respect to the exporter’s productivity growth is between 1.6 and 2.4, depending upon weighting. This provides an important contribution to the trade literature of Ricardian advantages, and it establishes a connection of migration to home country exports beyond bilateral networks.

Keywords: Trade; Exports; Comparative Advantage; Technological Transfer; Patents; Innovation; Research and Development; Immigration; Networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhx002 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Heterogeneous technology diffusion and Ricardian trade patterns (2017)
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns (2016)
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns (2013)
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Technology Diffusion and Ricardian Trade Patterns (2013)
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:oup:wbecrv:v:32:y:2018:i:1:p:163-182.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The World Bank Economic Review is currently edited by Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik

More articles in The World Bank Economic Review from World Bank Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().