期刊名称：CORE Discussion Papers / Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
出版年度：2007
卷号：1
出版社：Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (UCL), Louvain
摘要：Recent theoretical models predict gains from international trade coming from intra-industry
reallocations, due to a firm selection effect. In this paper we answer two related questions. First, what
is the magnitude of this selection effect, and how does it compare to that of intra-national trade ?
Second, would the removal of 'behind-the-border' trade frictions between integrated EU countries lead
to large productivity gains? To answer these questions, we extend and calibrate the Melitz and
Ottaviano (2007) model on productivity and trade data for European economies in 2000, and simulate
counterfactual trade liberalization scenarios. We consider 11 EU countries and a total of 31
economies, including 21 French regions. Our first result is that, in the French case, international trade
has a sizeable impact on aggregate productivity, but smaller than that of intra-national trade. Second,
substantial productivity gains (around 20%) can be expected from 'behind-the-border' integration. In
both experiments, we predict the corresponding variations in average prices, markups, quantities and
profits. We show that the model fits sales and exports data reasonably well, and we perform a number
of robustness checks. We also suggest some explanations for the substantial cross-economy and
cross-industry variations in our estimates of productivity gains, highlighting the importance of
accessibility and competitiveness.
关键词：European integration, intra-national trade, firm-level data, firm selection, gains from
trade, total factor productivity.
