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AI, Trade and Creative Destruction: A First Look

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Listed:
  • Daniel Trefler
  • Ruiqi Sun

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence is a powerful new technology that will likely have large impacts on the size, direction and composition of international trade flows. Yet almost nothing is known empirically about this. One AI-enabled set of services that can be tracked resides in the palm of our hands: the Mobile Apps used by half the world's population. To analyze the impact of AI on international trade in mobile App services we merge 2014-2020 data on international downloads of mobile Apps with data on the AI patents held by each App's parent company. From this we build a measure of AI deployment. We instrument AI deployment using cost-shifters from the theory of comparative advantage: Countries with a large stock of AI expertise will have a comparative advantage producing AI-intensive Apps. We show the following IV results. (1) Bilateral Trade: AI deployment increases App downloads by a factor of six. (2) Variety Effects: AI deployment doubles the number of exported App varieties. (3) Creative Destruction: AI deployment increases creative destruction (entry and exit of Apps) and in 2020 the net effect was an increase in welfare of between 2.5% and 10.6%.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel Trefler & Ruiqi Sun, 2022. "AI, Trade and Creative Destruction: A First Look," NBER Working Papers 29980, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29980
    Note: ITI
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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

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