MARCO MAFFEZZOLI

• LSM: A DSGE Model for Luxembourg (253 Kb)

Development accounting exercises based on an aggregate production function find technology is biased in favor of a country's abundant production factors. We provide an explanation for this finding based on the Heckscher-Ohlin model. Countries trade and specialize in the industries that use intensively the production factors they are abundantly endowed with. For given factor endowment ratios, this implies smaller international differences in factor price ratios than under autarky. Thus, when measuring the factor bias of technology with the same aggregate production function for all countries, they appear to have an abundant-factor bias in their technologies.

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We present a dynamic comparative advantage model in which moderate reductions in import tariffs can generate sizable increases in trade volumes over time. A fall in tariffs has two effects. First, for given factor endowments, it raises the degree of specialisation, leading to a larger volume of trade in the short run. Second, it raises the factor price of each country's abundant factor, leading to diverging paths of relative factor endowments and a rising degree of specialisation. A simulation exercise shows that a fall in tariffs produces a disproportional increase in the trade share of output as in the data.

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This paper suggests that the main (and possibly unique) source of beta- and sigma-convergence in GDP per worker (i.e. labor productivity) across Italian regions over the 1980-2004 period is the change in technical and allocative efficiency, i.e. convergence in relative TFP levels. To obtain this result, I construct an approximation of the production frontier at different points in time using Data Envelope Analysis (DEA), and measure efficiency as the output-based distance from the frontier. This method is entirely data-driven, and does not require the specification of any particular functional form for technology. Changes in GDP per worker can be decomposed into changes in relative efficiency, changes due to overall technological progress, and changes due to capital deepening. My results suggest that: (i) differences in relative TFP are quantitatively important; (ii) while technological progress and capital deepening are the main, and equally important, forces behind the rightward shift in the distribution of GDP per worker, convergence in relative TFP is the main determinant of the change in its shape.

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The dataset on regional capital stocks can be downloaded from here. Please cite the source.

This paper introduces HeckscherOhlin trade features into a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model, and studies the international transmission of productivity shocks through trade in goods. This framework improves upon existing international real business cycle models in that it generates business cycle properties comparable with the empirical evidence regarding the terms of trade and the trade balance.

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