IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ukc/ukcedp/1121.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Robustness of the Proposed Measures of Revealed Comparative Advantage

Author

Listed:
  • Ufuk Gunes Bebek

Abstract

The concept of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) stands as a major pillar in empirical trade literature. Yet there is no absolute preference among the suggested RCA measures. Given that these are volume-based indices, results of any relevant empirical analysis would be heavily influenced by the choice of the RCA measure. Considering such an ambiguity, this paper critically evaluates the proposed measures of RCA to identify the ideal measure based on theoretical, statistical and empirical precedence. Its suggested that the Balassa Index and the two corresponding multiplicative normalised variants are more consistent and robust for RCA analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Ufuk Gunes Bebek, 2011. "Robustness of the Proposed Measures of Revealed Comparative Advantage," Studies in Economics 1121, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    • Handle: RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:1121
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/repec/1121.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdul K. M. Azhar & Robert J. R. Elliott, 2008. "On the Measurement of Changes in Product Quality in Marginal Intra-Industry Trade," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 144(2), pages 225-247, July.
    2. Alan V. Deardorff, 2011. "The General Validity of the Law of Comparative Advantage," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robert M Stern (ed.), Comparative Advantage, Growth, And The Gains From Trade And Globalization A Festschrift in Honor of Alan V Deardorff, chapter 10, pages 73-90, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Kunimoto, Kazutaka, 1977. "Typology of Trade Intensity Indices," Hitotsubashi Journal of Economics, Hitotsubashi University, vol. 17(2), pages 15-32, February.
    4. Alex Hoen & Jan Oosterhaven, 2006. "On the measurement of comparative advantage," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 40(3), pages 677-691, August.
    5. repec:bla:reviec:v:8:y:2000:i:3:p:373-96 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. James Proudman & Stephen Redding, 2000. "Evolving Patterns of International Trade," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(3), pages 373-396, August.
    7. Abdul K. M. Azhar & Robert J. R. Elliott, 2006. "On the Measurement of Product Quality in Intra-Industry Trade," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 142(3), pages 476-495, October.
    8. Run Yu & Junning Cai & PingSun Leung, 2009. "The normalized revealed comparative advantage index," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 43(1), pages 267-282, March.
    9. Ufuk Gunes Bebek, 2011. "Monotonicity of additive indices of revealed comparative advantage," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(2), pages 1894-1901.
    10. Keld Laursen, 1998. "Revealed Comparative Advantage and the Alternatives as Measures of International Specialisation," DRUID Working Papers 98-30, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    11. Luca DE BENEDICTIS & Massimo TAMBERI, 2002. "A note on the Balassa Index of Revealed Comparative Advantage," Working Papers 158, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    12. Bent Dalum & Keld Laursen & Gert Villumsen, 1998. "Structural Change in OECD Export Specialisation Patterns: de-specialisation and 'stickiness'," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(3), pages 423-443.
    13. Thomas Vollrath, 1991. "A theoretical evaluation of alternative trade intensity measures of revealed comparative advantage," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 127(2), pages 265-280, June.
    14. Jeroen Hinloopen & Charles Marrewijk, 2001. "On the empirical distribution of the Balassa index," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 137(1), pages 1-35, March.
    15. Roy J. Ruffin, 2002. "David Ricardo's Discovery of Comparative Advantage," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 34(4), pages 727-748, Winter.
    16. Arye Hillman, 1980. "Observations on the relation between “revealed comparative advantage” and comparative advantage as indicated by pre-trade relative prices," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 116(2), pages 315-321, June.
    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. Andrey A. Gnidchenko & Vladimir A. Salnikov, 2015. "Net Comparative Advantage Index: Overcoming the Drawbacks of the Existing Indices," HSE Working papers WP BRP 119/EC/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    2. Ufuk Gunes Bebek, 2011. "Monotonicity of additive indices of revealed comparative advantage," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(2), pages 1894-1901.
    3. Ferto, Imre & Hubbard, Lionel J., 2003. "The Dynamics Of Agri-Food Trade Patterns - The Hungarian Case," 2003 Annual Meeting, August 16-22, 2003, Durban, South Africa 25851, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Martin Grančay & Tomáš Dudáš, 2019. "Bilateral trade flows and comparative advantage: does the size matter?," Society and Economy, Akadémiai Kiadó, Hungary, vol. 41(4), pages 397-413, December.
    5. Fertő, Imre & Hubbard, Lionel J., 2005. "Az agrárkereskedelem dinamikája - A csatlakozó országok esete [The dynamics of agri-food trade patterns - the accession countries case]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(1), pages 24-38.
    6. Iglesias, Matias Nehuen, 2021. "Measuring size distortions of location quotients," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 189-205.
    7. Viet V. Hoang, 2019. "Investigating the evolution of agricultural trade specialization in transition economies: A case study from Vietnam," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(4), pages 361-378, July.
    8. Kaveri Deb & William R. Hauk, 2017. "RCA indices, multinational production and the Ricardian trade model," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 1-25, January.
    9. Dominika Choros-Mrozowska, 2020. "Changes and Comparisons in Pattern of Polish Chinese Trade within the “16+1” Format," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(2), pages 327-342.
    10. Amador, João & Cabral, Sónia & Ramos Maria, José, 2007. "International Trade Patterns over the Last Four Decades: How does Portugal Compare with other Cohesion Countries?," MPRA Paper 5996, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Ufuk gunes Bebek, 2011. "Consistency of the proposed additive measures of revealed comparative advantage," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 31(3), pages 2491-2499.
    12. French, Scott, 2017. "Revealed comparative advantage: What is it good for?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 83-103.
    13. Kaveri Deb & Bodhisattva Sengupta, 2017. "On Empirical Distribution of RCA Indices," IIM Kozhikode Society & Management Review, , vol. 6(1), pages 23-41, January.
    14. Veselin Hadzhiev, 2014. "Overall Revealed Comparative Advantages," Eurasian Journal of Economics and Finance, Eurasian Publications, vol. 2(1), pages 47-53.
    15. repec:kap:iaecre:v:16:y:2010:i:3:p:311-324 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Jenny P. Danna-Buitrago & Rémi Stellian, 2022. "A New Class of Revealed Comparative Advantage Indexes," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 33(3), pages 477-503, July.
    17. Grigori Fainštein & Aleksei Netšunajev, 2010. "Foreign Trade Patterns Between Estonia and the EU," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 16(3), pages 311-324, August.
    18. Liu, Bin & Gao, Jianbo, 2019. "Understanding the non-Gaussian distribution of revealed comparative advantage index and its alternatives," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 1-11.
    19. Kaveri Deb & Bodhisattva Sengupta, 2018. "Value-Added Trade and Empirical Distributions of RCA Indices," Journal of Quantitative Economics, Springer;The Indian Econometric Society (TIES), vol. 16(1), pages 235-264, March.
    20. Moreno-Brieva, Fernando, 2022. "Effective way to measure the specialization levels of an economy in the era of global value chains," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 420-429.
    21. Hoang, V. V. & Tran, K. T. & Tu, B. V. & Nguyen, V. N. & Nguyen, A. Q., 2017. "Agricultural Competitiveness of Vietnam by the RCA and the NRCA Indices, and Consistency of Competitiveness Indices," AGRIS on-line Papers in Economics and Informatics, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Faculty of Economics and Management, vol. 9(4).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Revealed Comparative Advantage;

    JEL classification:

    • F11 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Neoclassical Models of Trade
    • C19 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Other

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ukc:ukcedp:1121. 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: Dr Anirban Mitra (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.kent.ac.uk/economics/ .

    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.