15/2010 James E Anderson and Yoto V Yotov

Specialization alters the incidence of trade costs to buyers and sellers, with pro-and anti-globalizing effects on 76 countries from 1990-2002. The structural gravity model yields measures of Constructed Home Bias and the Total Factor Productivity effect of changing incidence. A bit more than half the world's countries experience declining constructed home bias and rising real output while the remainder of countries experience rising home bias and falling real output. The effects are big for the outliers. A novel test of the structural gravity model restrictions shows it comes very close in an economic sense.

Culture and Development