International Trade and Per Capita Income Convergence: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis / Matthew J. Slaughter.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Slaughter, Matthew J.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w6557.

NBER working paper series no. w6557

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

International Trade and Per Capita Income Convergence

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 1998.

Summary:

In this paper I analyze whether international trade contributes to per capita income convergence across countries. The analysis focuses on four important post-1945 multilateral trade liberalizations. To identify trade's effect on income dispersion, in each case I use a difference-in-differences' approach which compares the convergence pattern among the liberalizing countries before and after liberalization with the convergence pattern among randomly chosen control countries before and after liberalization. My main empirical result is that trade liberalization did not trigger convergence in any of the four cases. If anything, trade seems to have caused income divergence.

Notes:

Print version record

May 1998.