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Discussion Paper Details

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Title: Together at Last: Trade Costs, Demand Structure, and Welfare

Author(s): Monika Mr�zov� and J Peter Neary

Publication Date: February 2014

Keyword(s): Additively Separable Preferences, CES Preferences, Iceberg Trade Costs, Quantifying Gains from Trade, Super- and Subconcavity of Utility and Super- and Subconvexity of Demand

Programme Area(s): International Trade and Regional Economics

Abstract: We show that relaxing the assumption of CES preferences in monopolistic competition has surprising implications when trade is restricted. Integrated and segmented markets behave very differently, the latter typically implying a form of reciprocal dumping. Globalization and lower trade costs have very different effects: the former reduces spending on all existing varieties, the latter switches spending from home to imported varieties; in the plausible case where demands are less convex than CES, globalization raises firm output whereas lower trade costs reduce it. Finally, calibrating gains from trade is harder. Many more parameters need to be calibrated than in the CES case, while import demand elasticities are likely to overestimate the true elasticities, and so underestimate the gains from trade.

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Bibliographic Reference

Mr�zov�, M and Neary, J. 2014. 'Together at Last: Trade Costs, Demand Structure, and Welfare'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=9839