IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ude/wpaper/1012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Distance and Political Boundaries:Estimating Border Effects under Inequality Constraints

Author

Listed:
  • Fernando Borraz

    (Banco Central del Uruguay y Departamento de Economía, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de la República)

  • Alberto Cavallo

    (MIT)

  • Roberto Rigobon

    (MIT, NBER)

  • Leandro Zipitría

    (Universidad de San Andrés, Universidad de Montevideo)

Abstract

The “border effect” literature ?nds that political boundaries have a large impact on relative prices, implicitly adding several thousands of miles to trade. In this paper we show that the standard empirical speci?cation suffers from selection bias, and propose a new methodology based on quantile regressions. Using a novel data set from Uruguay,we apply our procedure to measure the segmentation introduced by city borders. We find that when the standard methodology is used, two supermarkets separated by 10 kilometers across two different cities have the same price dispersion as two supermarkets separated by 30 kilometers within the same city; so the city border triples the distance. When our methodology is used, the city border effect becomes insignificant. We further test our method using online prices for the largest supermarket chain in the country, and show that the “online border” is equivalent to the average distance from the online warehouse to the offine stores.

Suggested Citation

  • Fernando Borraz & Alberto Cavallo & Roberto Rigobon & Leandro Zipitría, 2012. "Distance and Political Boundaries:Estimating Border Effects under Inequality Constraints," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 1012, Department of Economics - dECON.
  • Handle: RePEc:ude:wpaper:1012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12008/2234
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter J. Klenow & Oleksiy Kryvtsov, 2008. "State-Dependent or Time-Dependent Pricing: Does it Matter for Recent U.S. Inflation?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 863-904.
    2. Volker Nitsch, 2000. "National borders and international trade: evidence from the European Union," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(4), pages 1091-1105, November.
    3. Andrews, Donald W.K. & Guggenberger, Patrik, 2009. "Validity Of Subsampling And “Plug-In Asymptotic” Inference For Parameters Defined By Moment Inequalities," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 25(3), pages 669-709, June.
    4. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2008. "Understanding International Price Differences Using Barcode Data," NBER Working Papers 14017, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Donald W. K. Andrews & Xiaoxia Shi, 2013. "Inference Based on Conditional Moment Inequalities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(2), pages 609-666, March.
    6. Engel, Charles & Rogers, John H, 1996. "How Wide Is the Border?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1112-1125, December.
    7. Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg & Michael M. Knetter, 1997. "Goods Prices and Exchange Rates: What Have We Learned?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(3), pages 1243-1272, September.
    8. Gita Gopinath & Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas & Chang-Tai Hsieh & Nicholas Li, 2011. "International Prices, Costs, and Markup Differences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2450-2486, October.
    9. Thierry Mayer & Keith Head, 2002. "Illusory Border Effects: Distance Mismeasurement Inflates Estimates of Home Bias in Trade," Working Papers 2002-01, CEPII research center.
    10. John F. Helliwell & Geneviève Verdier, 2001. "Measuring internal trade distances: a new method applied to estimate provincial border effects in Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(4), pages 1024-1041, November.
    11. Janet Ceglowski, 2003. "The law of one price: intranational evidence for Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 36(2), pages 373-400, May.
    12. MarioJ. Crucini & Mototsugu Shintani & Takayuki Tsuruga, 2010. "The Law of One Price without the Border: The Role of Distance versus Sticky Prices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(544), pages 462-480, May.
    13. Alberto Cavallo, 2018. "Scraped Data and Sticky Prices," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 100(1), pages 105-119, March.
    14. Fernando Borraz & Leandro Zipitría & Enrique López Enciso, 2013. "Price Setting in Retailing: the Case of Uruguay," Investigación Conjunta-Joint Research, in: Laura Inés D'Amato & Enrique López Enciso & María Teresa Ramírez Giraldo (ed.), Inflationary Dynamics, Persistence, and Prices and Wages Formation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 193-220, Centro de Estudios Monetarios Latinoamericanos, CEMLA.
    15. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2001. "Borders, Trade and Welfare," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 508, Boston College Department of Economics.
    16. Parsley, David C. & Wei, Shang-Jin, 2001. "Explaining the border effect: the role of exchange rate variability, shipping costs, and geography," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 87-105, October.
    17. Russell Hillberry & David Hummels, 2003. "Intranational Home Bias: Some Explanations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(4), pages 1089-1092, November.
    18. Frankel, Jeffrey & Stein, Ernesto & Wei, Shang-jin, 1995. "Trading blocs and the Americas: The natural, the unnatural, and the super-natural," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 61-95, June.
    19. Fernando Borraz & Leandro Zipitría, 2012. "Retail Price Setting in Uruguay," Economía Journal, The Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association - LACEA, vol. 0(Spring 20), pages 77-109, January.
    20. Rosen, Adam M., 2008. "Confidence sets for partially identified parameters that satisfy a finite number of moment inequalities," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 146(1), pages 107-117, September.
    21. Holger C. Wolf, 2000. "Intranational Home Bias In Trade," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(4), pages 555-563, November.
    22. Donald W. K. Andrews & Gustavo Soares, 2010. "Inference for Parameters Defined by Moment Inequalities Using Generalized Moment Selection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(1), pages 119-157, January.
    23. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Linda L. Tesar, 2009. "Border Effect or Country Effect? Seattle May Not Be So Far from Vancouver After All," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 219-241, January.
    24. Janet Ceglowski, 2003. "The law of one price: intranational evidence for Canada," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(2), pages 373-400, May.
    25. John F. Helliwell & Lawrence L. Schembri, 2005. "Borders, Common Currencies, Trade, and Welfare: What Can We Learn from the Evidence?," Bank of Canada Review, Bank of Canada, vol. 2005(Spring), pages 19-33.
    26. Maria Ponomareva & Elie Tamer, 2011. "Misspecification in moment inequality models: back to moment equalities?," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 14(2), pages 186-203, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fernando Borraz & Leandro Zipitría, 2016. "Law of One Price, Distance, and Borders," Documentos de trabajo 2016007, Banco Central del Uruguay.
    2. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    3. Jacint Balaguer & Jordi Ripollés, 2018. "Revisiting the importance of border effect in sub‐national regions. Evidence from a quasi‐experimental design," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 97(4), pages 1113-1130, November.
    4. Balaguer, Jacint & Ripollés, Jordi, 2018. "Disentangling the importance of international border effects. Some evidence from Portugal–Spain based on diesel retailers," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 260-269.
    5. Saileshsingh Gunessee & Cheng Zhang, 2022. "The economics of domestic market integration," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 1069-1095, September.
    6. Ross D. Hickey & David S. Jacks, 2011. "Nominal rigidities and retail price dispersion in Canada over the twentieth century," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(3), pages 749-780, August.
    7. Bruce Cater & Byron Lew, 2018. "The impact of climate on the law of one price: A test using North American food prices from the 1920s," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(4), pages 1191-1220, November.
    8. Mamello A Nchake & Lawrence Edwards & Tresor N Kaya, 2019. "The Size of the Border and Product Market Integration Between Lesotho and South Africa: A Production–Consumption Approach," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 28(1), pages 70-88.
    9. Jiří Schwarz, 2012. "Impact of institutions on cross-border price dispersion," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 148(4), pages 617-645, December.
    10. Demet Yilmazkuday & Hakan Yilmazkuday, 2017. "The role of direct flights in trade costs," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 153(2), pages 249-270, May.
    11. Aker, Jenny C. & Klein, Michael W. & O'Connell, Stephen A. & Yang, Muzhe, 2014. "Borders, ethnicity and trade," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 1-16.
    12. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Linda Tesar, 2005. "A Re-Examination of the Border Effect," NBER Working Papers 11706, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Chahrour, Ryan & Stevens, Luminita, 2020. "Price dispersion and the border effect," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 135-146.
    14. Baxter, Marianne & Landry, Anthony, 2017. "IKEA: Product, pricing, and pass-through," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 507-520.
    15. S. Brock Blomberg & Rozlyn C. Engel, 2012. "Lines in the Sand: Price Dispersion across Iraq's Intranational Borders before, during, and after the Surge," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(3), pages 503-538.
    16. Simon C. Fan & Xiangdong Wei & Jia Wu, 2016. "Special Section: China's Growing Trade and its Role to the World Economy," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(1), pages 3-12, February.
    17. Robinson, Amanda Lea, 2016. "Internal Borders: Ethnic-Based Market Segmentation in Malawi," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 371-384.
    18. Carlos Llano‐Verduras & Asier Minondo & Francisco Requena‐Silvente, 2011. "Is the Border Effect an Artefact of Geographical Aggregation?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(10), pages 1771-1787, October.
    19. Alberto Cavallo & Brent Neiman & Roberto Rigobon, 2014. "Currency Unions, Product Introductions, and the Real Exchange Rate," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(2), pages 529-595.
    20. Kei-Mu Yi, 2010. "Can Multistage Production Explain the Home Bias in Trade?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 364-393, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Border effect; political borders; price dispersion; quantile regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General
    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • F40 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ude:wpaper:1012. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Andrea Doneschi or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/derauuy.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.