Estimating Trade Elasticities

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One cannot exaggerate the importance of estimating how international trade responds to changes in income and prices. But there is a tension between whether one should use models that fit the data but that contradict certain aspects of the underlying theory or models that fit the theory but contradict certain aspects of the data. The essays in Estimating Trade Elasticities book offer one practical approach to deal with this tension. The analysis starts with the practical implications of optimising behaviour for estimation and it follows with a re-examination of the puzzling income elasticity for US imports that three decades of studies have not resolved. The analysis then turns to the study of the role of income and prices in determining the expansion in Asian trade, a study largely neglected in fifty years of research. With the new estimates of trade elasticities, the book examines how they assist in restoring the consistency between elasticity estimates and the world trade identity.