The Long and Short (Run) of Trade Elasticities

Christoph Boehm, Andrei Levchenko and Nitya Pandalai-Nayar

No 680, Working Papers from Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan

Abstract: We propose a novel approach to estimate the trade elasticity at various horizons. When countries change Most Favored Nation (MFN) tariffs, partners that trade on MFN terms experience plausibly exogenous tariff changes. The differential effects on imports from these to a control group Ð countries not subject to the MFN tariff scheme Ð can be used to identify the trade elasticity. We build a panel dataset combining information on product-level tariffs and trade flows covering 1995-2018, and estimate the trade elasticity at short and long horizons using local projections (Jordˆ, 2005). Our main findings are that the elasticity of tariff-exclusive trade flows in the year following the exogenous tariff change is about -0.76, and the long-run elasticity ranges from -1.75 to -2.25. Our long-run estimates are smaller than typical in the literature, and it takes 7-10 years to converge to the long run, implying that (i) the welfare gains from trade are high and (ii) there are substantial convexities in the costs of adjusting export participation.

Keywords: Trade; Elasticity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 81 pages
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-ore
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/rsie/workingpapers/Papers676-700/r680.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: The Long and Short (Run) of Trade Elasticities (2023)
Working Paper: The Long and Short (Run) of Trade Elasticities (2020)
Working Paper: The Long and Short (Run) of Trade Elasticities (2020)
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:mie:wpaper:680

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by FSPP Webmaster ().