Welfare and trade without Pareto /
Head, Keith,author.
Mayer, Thierry,author.
Thoenig, Mathias,author.
Centre for Economic Policy Research (Great Britain)
Quantifications of gains from trade in heterogeneous firm models assume that productivity is Pareto distributed. Replacing this assumption with log-normal heterogeneity retains some useful Pareto features, while providing a substantially better fit to sales distributions -- especially in the left tail. The cost of log-normal is that gains from trade depend on the method of calibrating the fixed cost and productivity distribution parameters. When set to match the size distribution of firm sales in a given market, the log-normal assumption delivers gains from trade in a symmetric two country model that can be twice as large as under the Pareto assumption.
Caption title.
"February 2014."
"International trade and regional economics."
Includes bibliographical references (pages 9, 19-20).
Quantifications of gains from trade in heterogeneous firm models assume that productivity is Pareto distributed. Replacing this assumption with log-normal heterogeneity retains some useful Pareto features, while providing a substantially better fit to sales distributions -- especially in the left tail. The cost of log-normal is that gains from trade depend on the method of calibrating the fixed cost and productivity distribution parameters. When set to match the size distribution of firm sales in a given market, the log-normal assumption delivers gains from trade in a symmetric two country model that can be twice as large as under the Pareto assumption.
International trade
Industrial management