Globalization and the Gains from Variety

61 Pages Posted: 28 Sep 2004

See all articles by Christian M. Broda

Christian M. Broda

University of Chicago - Booth School of Business; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

David E. Weinstein

Columbia University - Graduate School of Arts and Sciences - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

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Date Written: March 2004

Abstract

Since the seminal work of Krugman, product variety has played a central role in models of trade and growth. In spite of the general use of love-of-variety models, there has been no systematic study of how the import of new varieties has contributed to national welfare gains in the United States. In this paper, we show that the unmeasured growth in product variety from U.S. imports has been an important source of gains from trade over the last three decades (1972-2001). Using extremely disaggregated data, we show that the number of imported product varieties has increased by a factor of four. We also estimate the elasticities of substitution for each available category at the same level of aggregation and describe their behavior across time and SITC-5 industries. Using these estimates, we develop an exact price index and find that the upward bias in the conventional import price index is approximately 1.2 percent per year. The magnitude of this bias suggests that the welfare gains from variety growth in imports alone are 2.8 percent of GDP.

Keywords: gains from trade, gains from variety, variety growth in U.S. trade

JEL Classification: F0, F1, F4

Suggested Citation

Broda, Christian M. and Weinstein, David E., Globalization and the Gains from Variety (March 2004). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=596603 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.596603

Christian M. Broda (Contact Author)

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David E. Weinstein

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