IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/3213.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the measurement of product variety in trade

Author

Listed:
  • Feenstra, Robert
  • Hiau Looi Kee

Abstract

Product variety plays an important role in the theoretical work on monopolistic competition and trade, and recent empirical work has begun to quantify this for aggregate and disaggregate import demands. The authors discuss the measurement of product variety in trade, using a broad cross-section of industrial and developing countries and disaggregating across sectors. The authors calculate the export variety of countries in their sales to the United States, and relate the export variety indexes to country productivities. They confirm that countries with greater product variety in exports also have higher productivity. This may be due to their development of and access to these products.

Suggested Citation

  • Feenstra, Robert & Hiau Looi Kee, 2004. "On the measurement of product variety in trade," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3213, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:3213
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2004/06/02/000009486_20040602102954/Rendered/PDF/wps3213measurement.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. By Michael Funke & Ralf Ruhwedel, 2001. "Product Variety and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence for the OECD Countries," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 48(2), pages 1-1.
    2. Feenstra, Robert C, 1994. "New Product Varieties and the Measurement of International Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 157-177, March.
    3. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2006. "Globalization and the Gains From Variety," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 541-585.
    4. Feenstra, Robert C. & Madani, Dorsati & Yang, Tzu-Han & Liang, Chi-Yuan, 1999. "Testing endogenous growth in South Korea and Taiwan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 317-341, December.
    5. Robert C. Feenstra & Hiau Looi Kee, 2004. "Export Variety and Country Productivity," NBER Working Papers 10830, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Sato, Kazuo, 1976. "The Ideal Log-Change Index Number," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 58(2), pages 223-228, May.
    7. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum, 2002. "Technology, Geography, and Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1741-1779, September.
    8. Peter K. Schott, 2004. "Across-Product Versus Within-Product Specialization in International Trade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 647-678.
    9. Michael Funke & Ralf Ruhwedel, 2002. "Export variety and export performance: Empirical evidence for the OECD countries," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 138(1), pages 97-114, March.
    10. Hiau Looi Kee, 2001. "Productivity versus endowments - a study of Singapore's sectoral growth, 1974-92," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2702, The World Bank.
    11. David Hummels & Peter J. Klenow, 2002. "The Variety and Quality of a Nation's Trade," NBER Working Papers 8712, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Kang, Kichun, 2009. "The export price index with the effect of variety and an empirical analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 385-391, March.
    2. Robert C. Feenstra, 2010. "Measuring the gains from trade under monopolistic competition," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(1), pages 1-28, February.
    3. Robert C. Feenstra, 2006. "New Evidence on the Gains from Trade," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 142(4), pages 617-641, December.
    4. Ana Cecília Fieler & Jonathan Eaton, 2025. "The Margins of Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 93(1), pages 129-160, January.
    5. Broda, Christian & Greenfield, Joshua & Weinstein, David E., 2017. "From groundnuts to globalization: A structural estimate of trade and growth," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(4), pages 759-783.
    6. Frensch, Richard & Gaucaite Wittich, Vitalija, 2009. "Product variety and technical change," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 242-257, March.
    7. Stephen J. Redding & David E. Weinstein, 2017. "Aggregating from Micro to Macro Patterns of Trade," NBER Working Papers 24051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Robert Z. Lawrence & Lawrence Edward, 2010. "Do Developed and Developing Countries Compete Head to Head in High Tech?," Working Paper Series WP10-8, Peterson Institute for International Economics.
    9. Ardelean, Adina & Lugovskyy, Volodymyr, 2010. "Domestic productivity and variety gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 280-291, March.
    10. Colantone, Italo & Crinò, Rosario, 2014. "New imported inputs, new domestic products," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 147-165.
    11. Benkovskis, Konstantins & Wörz, Julia, 2018. "What drives the market share changes? Price versus non-price factors," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 9-29.
    12. Costas Arkolakis & Svetlana Demidova & Peter J. Klenow & Andres Rodriguez-Clare, 2008. "Endogenous Variety and the Gains from Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 444-450, May.
    13. Christian Hepenstrick & Alexander Tarasov, 2015. "Per capita income and the extensive margin of bilateral trade," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(4), pages 1561-1599, November.
    14. Kichun Kang, 2022. "Import Variety and Productivity: Positive or Negative?," Korean Economic Review, Korean Economic Association, vol. 38, pages 43-72.
    15. Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2010. "Why Have Economic Reforms in Mexico Not Generated Growth?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1005-1027, December.
    16. Redding, Stephen J. & Weinstein, David E., 2024. "Accounting for trade patterns," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    17. Chen, Natalie & Juvenal, Luciana, 2022. "Markups, quality, and trade costs," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    18. Funke, Michael & Ruhwedel, Ralf, 2003. "Trade, product variety and welfare: a quantitative assessment for the transition economies in Central and Eastern Europe," BOFIT Discussion Papers 17/2003, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    19. Robert C. Feenstra & Yongmin Chen, 2005. "Buyer Investment, Product Variety, and Intrafirm Trade," NBER Working Papers 11752, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Daniel Goya, 2014. "The Multiple Impacts of the Exchange Rate on Export Diversification," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1436, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.

    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:wbk:wbrwps:3213. 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: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.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.