Price Elasticities In International Trade

December 1996 For the first time in the economics literature, Panagariya, Shah, and Mishra obtain import demand elasticities for a small country (Bangladesh) that are very large. The elasticities are based on parameters of a utility function that are systematically of the correct sign and statistically significant. Using highly disaggregated data, both own-price and cross-price elasticities are estimated. Most economists are comfortable with the assumption that import demand elasticities facing small countries such as Austria, Belgium, and Denmark are approximately infinite. Yet the actual estimates of import demand elasticities for these and other countries are disturbingly low. Typical estimates range from 1-2, and in rare cases rise to 3. Such estimates seriously undermine the case for unilateral liberalization since they suggest considerable market power on the part of even small economies. They also raise doubts about the ability of exports to serve as an engine of growth. With import demand elasticities lying between 1 and 3, a 20 percent annual expansion in exports would, for example, lead to a substantial deterioration in the terms of trade. Panagariya, Shah, and Mishra analyze the U.S. demand for imports from Bangladesh for the products restricted under the Multifiber Arrangement. Because Bangladesh is only a small supplier of these products and close substitutes are available from many Asian and Latin American countries, they expected the elasticity of demand for Bangladeshi imports to be high. Their estimates of own-price elasticity are consistently high, exceeding 65 in all cases. This finding accords with trade theorists' prejudice that small countries can essentially behave as price takers but conflicts with the view in the empirical literature that demand elasticities rarely exceed 3 and are generally between 1 and 2. The authors' analysis differs from the existing literature in three ways. First, contrary to the general practice of postulating an ad hoc equation that violates trade theory, they derive a set of estimation equations from an explicit, utility-maximization model. They estimate these equations as a system and use the estimated parameters of the utility function to obtain the Marshallian own-price and cross-price elasticities as well as the income elasticity of demand. Second, they take explicit account of U.S. imports from competitors of Bangladesh. Rather than proxy competitors' prices by the prices prevailing in the export market, they rely directly on competitors' prices. Finally, they use highly disaggregated data that make the unit value of exports a far better proxy for price than is the case with the aggregate export data that are commonly used in this literature. This paper is a product of the Country Operations Division, Country Department I, South Asia. The study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under research project Export Competitiveness and the Real Exchange Rate (RPO 679-59).

This book addresses a number of issues related to the estimation and application of elasticities in international agricultural trade. It is the outgrowth of renewed interest by researchers, traders, and others in quantifying those factors that affect international trade of agricultural products.

This distinctive book sets forth, on an advanced level, various methods for the quantitative measurement of important relationships at issue in areas of the balance of payments and international trade and welfare. The results achieved in recent studies are presented and the directions for new research are indicated. This book is composed of two main parts.Part I deals with the balance of payments and consists of the first half of the book. One of the longest and almost important chapters of this part talks about, at length the time-series analysis of the demand for imports and exports from the point of view of an individual country. This subject has a long and somewhat checkered history dating from the 1940's, when a number of estimates using least squares multiple regression methods were made of import and export demand functions for the interwar period. The noteworthy feature of many of these estimates was that they suggested relatively low price elasticities of demand in international trade. The implication was thus drawn that the international price mechanism could not be relied on for balance-of payments adjustment purposes.This book talks about the topics of theory and measurement of the elasticity of substitution in international trade, estimating the international capital movements, and forecasting and policy analysis with econometric models. Part II deals with international trade and welfare. While, there are many other books dealing with trade theory, this title focuses on a narrower range of topics that are not always mentioned or understood by individuals, such as the theory and measurement of trade dependence and interdependence, the analysis of the component factors a country has that affects how its export growth is over time, and the welfare effects of trade liberalizationThis book serves as a guide and reference work for economics graduate students, academicians, and practicing economists in private and governmental circles. They will find this book

First published in 1999, this volume responds to one of the more important issues in applied international economics: the extent to which trade flows adjust to changes in income, relative prices and exchange rates. This work surveys the literature on empirical estimation of the demand for imports and exports for the US. The book is designed to be a reference book for both academic international economists and international trade practitioners in government, international organisations and the private sector.

For the first time in the ...