There are two principal theories of why countries trade: comparative advantage and increasing returns to scale. Yet there is no empirical work that assesses the relative importance of these two theories in accounting for production structure and trade. We use a framework that nests an increasing returns model of economic geography featuring "home market" effects with that of Heckscher-Ohlin. We employ these trade models to account for the structure of OECD manufacturing production. The data militate against the economic geography framework. Relatively few sectors match its theoretical predictions. Moreover, of the explainable variation in production patterns, endowments account for 90 per cent, economic geography but 5 per cent.
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Paper provided by Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan in its series Working Papers with number
403.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade O41 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - One, Two, and Multisector Growth Models
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Leamer, Edward E. & Levinsohn, James, 1995.
"International trade theory: The evidence,"
Handbook of International Economics,
in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 26, pages 1339-1394
Elsevier.
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