We show that the effects of tariff changes on welfare and import volume can be fully characterized by their effects on the generalized mean and variance of the tariff distribution. Using these tools, we derive new results for welfare- and market-access-improving tariff changes, which imply two...

What kind of tariff reform is likely to raise welfare in situations where tariff revenue is important? Uncertainty about specification and risk from imprecise parameter estimates of any particular specification reduce the credibility of simulation estimates. A promising alternative is to develop...

The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones. We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate...

This paper develops and characterizes an index of trade policy restrictiveness defined as the uniform tariff equivalent which maintains the same volume of trade as a given set of tariffs, quota, and domestic taxes and subsidies. We relate this volume-equivalent index to the Trade Restrictiveness...

A two-period model of temporary equilibrium with rationing is presented, paying particular attention to agents' expectations of future constraints. it is shown that with arbitrary constraint expectations many different types of current equilibria may be consistent with the same set of (current...

This paper improves on current treatment of exchange rate variation in quantitative trade models. Exchange rate changes with heterogeneous passthrough to buyers are embedded in the structural gravity model. Quantification on two digit annual bilateral trade data reveals real effects of exchange...

We propose a short-run model of the extensive margin of trade and deploy it to distinguish and quantify domestic and cross-border margins. Our empirical focus is on the domestic extensive margin of trade (domestic distribution of a product) and its importance for quantifying policy and...

Almost Ideal gravity associates zero trade flows with variable and fixed trade cost variation in a flexible demand system. Latent trade shares between non-partners are inferred from the Tobit estimator applied to trade among 75 countries and 25 sectors in 2006. Latent Trade Bias (LTB) is the...

Short run gravity is a geometric weighted average of long run gravity and bilateral capacity. The model features (i) joint trade costs endogenous to bilateral volumes, (ii) long run gravity as a limiting case of efficient investment in bilateral capacities, (iii) a structural ratio of short run...