The Small Open Economy in a Generalized Gravity Model / Svetlana Demidova, Takumi Naito, Andrés Rodríguez-Clare.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Demidova, Svetlana.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Naito, Takumi.

Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w30394.

NBER working paper series no. w30394

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2022.

Summary:

To provide sharp answers to basic questions in international trade, a standard approach is to focus on a small open economy (SOE). Whereas the classic tradition is to define a SOE as an economy that takes world prices as given, in the modern trade literature a SOE is defined instead as one that takes foreign-good prices and export demand schedules as given. In this paper we develop a generalized gravity model that nests all of its standard microfoundations (e.g., Armington and Melitz-Pareto) and show how to take the limit so that an economy that becomes infinitesimally small behaves like a SOE. We then show how the resulting model of a SOE can be used to understand comparative statics and the optimal tariff in a way that is robust across the different microfoundations consistent with the gravity model.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2022.