Trade, Productivity Improvements and Welfare

Download or read book Trade, Productivity Improvements and Welfare written by Letizia Montinari and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, I investigate the welfare effects that developed countries experience after productivity improvements occur in their emerging trading partners, using a two-country model featuring pro-competitive effects of trade and asymmetries in technology. I model the technology advantage of the developed country, assuming that the productivity distribution its firms draw from stochastically dominates that of the emerging country. Calibrated to match aggregate and firm level statistics of the US economy, the model predicts that the country with better technology has a higher productivity cut-off level, higher average productivity and higher welfare. Productivity improvements in the emerging country generate selection and raise welfare everywhere, with both the selection effect and the positive welfare effect being stronger in the emerging country. Finally, trade liberalization is associated with more selection and higher welfare in both the developed and the emerging country.