Market Access, Economic Geography and Comparative Advantage: An Empirical Assessment

Donald Davis () and David Weinstein

Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: The increasing returns revolution in trade is incomplete in an important respect - there exists no compelling empirical demonstration of the role of increasing returns in determining production and trade structure. One reason is that trade patterns of the canonical increasing returns models are a consequence simply of specialization, which all theories permit. Krugman (1980) shows that increasing returns models with costs of trade - economic geography - do allow a simple test: home market effects of demand on production. Davis and Weinstein (1996) reject the simple Krugman (1980) model on OECD data. Here we pair the model with a richer geography structure and find evidence of the importance of increasing returns, in combination with comparative advantage, in affecting OECD manufacturing production structure. The results underscore the importance of market access in implementing models of economic geography.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Market Access, Economic Geography, and Comparative Advantage: An Empirical Assessment (1998)
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:fth:harver:1850

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers from Harvard - Institute of Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Thomas Krichel ().