The More We Die, The More We Sell? A Simple Test of the Home-Market Effect

Arnaud Costinot, Dave Donaldson, Margaret Kyle and Heidi Williams ()

No 22538, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The home-market effect, first hypothesized by Linder (1961) and later formalized by Krugman (1980), is the idea that countries with larger demand for some products at home tend to have larger sales of the same products abroad. In this paper, we develop a simple test of the home-market effect using detailed drug sales data from the global pharmaceutical industry. The core of our empirical strategy is the observation that a country’s exogenous demographic composition can be used as a predictor of the diseases that its inhabitants are most likely to die from and, in turn, the drugs that they are most likely to demand. We find that the correlation between predicted home demand and sales abroad is positive and greater than the correlation between predicted home demand and purchases from abroad. In short, countries tend to be net sellers of the drugs that they demand the most, as predicted by Linder (1961) and Krugman (1980).

JEL-codes: F1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-08
Note: IFM ITI
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published as Arnaud Costinot & Dave Donaldson & Margaret Kyle & Heidi Williams, 2019. "The More We Die, The More We Sell? A Simple Test of the Home-Market Effect*," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol 134(2), pages 843-894.

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Related works:
Journal Article: The More We Die, The More We Sell? A Simple Test of the Home-Market Effect (2019)
Working Paper: The More We Die, The More We Sell? A Simple Test of the Home-Market Effect* (2019)
Working Paper: The More We Die, The More We Sell? A Simple Test of the Home-Market Effect (2016)
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