On some effects of international fragmentation of production on comparative advantages, trade flows, and the income of countries

Salvatore Baldone, Fabio Sdogati and Lucia Tajoli ()
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Salvatore Baldone: Polytechnic University of Milano, Italy.
Fabio Sdogati: Polytechnic University of Milano, Italy.

No 187, KITeS Working Papers from KITeS, Centre for Knowledge, Internationalization and Technology Studies, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: In traditional trade models, whether based on technological differences or on relative factor endowments, merchandise composition and directions of trade are derived from closed-economy, pre-trade conditions. But nowadays one the basic assumptions of traditional trade models, i.e. that production processes are integrated within just one country, is being increasingly violated as previously integrated productive activities are segmented and spread over an international network of production sites: as a result, an increasingly large share of trade flows is made up of intermediate and unfinished goods being transferred from one country to another in order to be processed. In this paper we submit that such new configuration of production processes has important effects on at least three dimensions of economic research. First, we show that international disintegration of production processes leads to a lessening of the power of comparative advantages when it comes to explaining both merchandise composition and directions of trade, while it is the concept of absolute advantage to become increasingly relevant; second, we show that empirical measures of revealed comparative advantages are inherently misleading if they do not account for differences in the stageof-processing of traded goods; third, we estimate a simple model of aggregate demand accounting for international trade in intermediates: results of estimation lend support to our prior that participation of a country in the process of international fragmentation of production plays a specific and significant role in determining its year-over-year change in GDP.

Keywords: International division of labor; Absolute and comparative advantages; International fragmentation of production; Processing trade. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: pages 34
Date: 2006-11, Revised 2006-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Journal Article: On Some Effects of International Fragmentation of Production on Comparative Advantages, Trade Flows and the Income of Countries (2007)
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