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Openness is a Matter of Degree: How Trade Costs Reduce Demand Elasticities

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  • Adrian Wood (QEH)

Abstract

The relative costs of trading different goods vary much less than the relative costs of producing them. The costs of trade are also often high. In consequence, as this paper shows theoretically and with simulations, demand elasticities in open economies are much lower than substitution elasticities between different national varieties of goods. Output structures in open economies thus respond to variation of relative production costs in qualitatively the same way as in closed economies, in sharp contrast to what standard trade theory predicts, but the degree of responsiveness tends to be higher in countries with lower trade costs.

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  • Adrian Wood (QEH), "undated". "Openness is a Matter of Degree: How Trade Costs Reduce Demand Elasticities," QEH Working Papers qehwps169, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
  • Handle: RePEc:qeh:qehwps:qehwps169
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    Cited by:

    1. Adrian Wood (ODID), "undated". "A practical Heckscher-Ohlin model," QEH Working Papers qehwps170, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
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