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Working Paper
Demand Uncertainty, Selection, and Trade
This paper examines the role of uncertainty on elasticities of trade flows with respect to variable trade costs in a canonical model of trade with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms. We identify two channels through which uncertainty impacts trade: through export participation thresholds (the selection effect) and the distribution of shocks governing export selection (the dispersion effect). While the selection effect dampens trade elasticities under uncertainty, the dispersion effect is ambiguous. We develop a methodology for using customs firm-level data to quantify trade ...
Report
Quantitative Trade Models: Developments and Challenges
Applied general equilibrium (AGE) models, which feature multiple countries or regions, multiple sectors, and input-output linkages across sectors in a Walrasian general equilibrium framework, have been the dominant tool for evaluating the impact of trade liberalization since the 1980s. We provide an overview of the historical development of AGE models and a guide as to how they are used to perform policy analysis. We then review and document shortcomings in the performance of AGE models in predicting the sectoral effects of past trade reforms, that is, we show that AGE models often perform ...