The evolution of comparative advantage: measurement and implications

Andrei Levchenko and Jing Zhang

No 11, UBSCENTER - Working Papers from UBS International Center of Economics in Society - Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: We estimate productivities at the sector level for 72 countries and 5 decades, and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. In both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at greater comparative disadvantage. These changes have had a signicant impact on trade volumes and patterns, and a non-negligible welfare impact. In the counterfactual scenario in which each country's comparative advantage remained the same as in the 1960s, and technology in all sectors grew at the same country-specic average rate, trade volumes would be higher, cross-country export patterns more dissimilar, and intra-industry trade lower than in the data. In this counterfactual scenario, welfare is also 1.6% higher for the median country compared to the baseline. The welfare impact varies greatly across countries, ranging from −1.1% to +4.3% among OECD countries, and from −4.6% to +41.9% among non-OECD countries.

Keywords: Technological change; sectoral TFP; Ricardian models of trade; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F11 F43 O33 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-int
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Evolution of Comparative Advantage: Measurement and Implications (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:uceswp:011

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