Essays in international economics.
2009-06
Loading...
View/Download File
Persistent link to this item
Statistics
View StatisticsJournal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Title
Essays in international economics.
Authors
Published Date
2009-06
Publisher
Type
Thesis or Dissertation
Abstract
This dissertation considers firms' optimal behavior while participating in international trade when firms are ex ante heterogeneous in terms of their productivity. The first chapter explains why a representative firm assumption cannot explain most of the observations we see in the data related to exporting firms and non-exporting firms. Moreover, this chapter explains the mechanism of why the theory needs a heterogeneous firm assumption to explain the observed facts.
The second chapter deals with the interaction between income differences across countries and international trade patterns. Income is not equally distributed among countries and this chapter analyzes the effect of this unequal distribution on bilateral trade patterns in an environment with heterogeneous firms. The second chapter develops a framework in which countries, depending on their income, potentially demand different sets of varieties as well as different quantities for a given variety using non-homothetic preferences which is in contrast to the standard framework with homothetic preferences. A quantitative comparison between the framework proposed in this chapter and a standard framework shows that they predict similar trade patterns even with different estimated inputs for the variable trade barriers, implying that when rich countries export, income differences with the trading partner in my framework play a similar role as additional trade barriers in the standard framework. Finally, this chapter analyzes the impact of high growth of poor countries. As poor countries grow, the trade barriers they face fall. As a consequence, the increase in the growth of world trade in the non-homothetic model will be higher than the predicted counterpart in the standard model.
The third chapter analyzes asymmetric information and impacts of this on the decisions of importers and exporters engaged in international trade. This chapter incorporates learning and reputation building into a simple stochastic dynamic model of trade and studies two bilateral trade flows influenced significantly by learning and reputation, namely United States imports of Japanese and French cars over the period 1961-2005. This chapter finds that since learning and reputation building require time, predicted short run trade patterns can be quite different than those predicted in the long run.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. July 2009. Major: Economics. Advisors: Timothy J. Kehoe and Fabrizio Perri. 1 computer file (PDF); xi, 104 pages. Ill. (some col.)
Related to
Replaces
License
Collections
Series/Report Number
Funding information
Isbn identifier
Doi identifier
Previously Published Citation
Suggested citation
Goksel, Turkmen l. (2009). Essays in international economics.. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/53551.
Content distributed via the University Digital Conservancy may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor. By using these files, users agree to the Terms of Use. Materials in the UDC may contain content that is disturbing and/or harmful. For more information, please see our statement on harmful content in digital repositories.