SMU SOE Seminar (March 24, 2023): Rethinking Revealed Comparative Advantage with Micro Data

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ABSTRACT In a seminal paper, Balassa (1965) introduced the notion of revealed comparative advantage (RCA) as a measure of comparative advantage based on export patterns across sectors. There are, however, two problems with such an approach. First, the sectoral ranking of revealed comparative advantage according to relative sectoral exports may not coincide with the ranking of comparative advantage based on relative costs. Second, the various exogenous and endogenous factors determining the observed export patterns may be hard to disentangle as long as some of them are unobserved. We tackle both problems by developing a quantitative framework with firm heterogeneity where firm-level data can be exploited to obtain a theoretically consistent measure of RCA as well as an assessment of its different determinants. Click here to view the CV.
		PRESENTER Hanwei Huang City University of Hong Kong
		RESEARCH FIELDS International Trade
		DATE: 24 March 2023 (Friday)
		TIME: 10am - 11.30am
		VENUE: Meeting Room 5.1, Level 5 School of Economics Singapore Management University 90 Stamford Road Singapore 178903