Aggregation across each nation: aggregator choice and macroeconomic dynamics

Noëmie Lisack, Simon Lloyd and Rana Sajedi

No 982, Bank of England working papers from Bank of England

Abstract: We study the implications of trade aggregation in an infinite-horizon economy with multiple countries. Specifically, we ask whether there is a role for alternatives to the Armington aggregator in the workhorse open-economy macroeconomics model. We show analytically that the first-order dynamics of the model are entirely captured by a few sufficient statistics, so that the precise choice of functional form for the trade aggregator is irrelevant. This irrelevance result has the following implications. For given steady-state trade elasticities and expenditure shares, any aggregator that is homogeneous of degree one is equivalent to the Armington aggregator at first order. Similarly, aggregators that are homogeneous of arbitrary degree are equivalent to a simple generalisation of the Armington aggregator, for given steady-state trade elasticities and expenditure shares. In models with more than two countries, alternative aggregators can play a role by allowing for steady-state differences in bilateral trade elasticities across different country pairs, which the Armington aggregator rules out.

Keywords: International trade; open-economy macroeconomics; Armington aggregator; elasticity of trade. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F00 F10 F41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2022-05-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-opm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Aggregation Across Each Nation: Aggregator Choice and Macroeconomic Dynamics (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:boe:boeewp:0982

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