TY  - JOUR
AU  - Markusen,James R.
AU  - Venables,Anthony J.
TI  - A Multi-Country Approach to Factor-Proportions Trade and Trade Costs
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11051
PY  - 2005
Y2  - January 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11051
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11051.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James R. Markusen
Department of Economics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0256
Tel: 303/492-0748
Fax: 303/492-8960
E-Mail: james.markusen@colorado.edu

Anthony Venables
Department of Economics
University of Oxford
Manor Road Building
Manor Road
Oxford OX1 3UQ, United Kingdom
and CEPR
E-Mail: tony.venables@economics.ox.ac.uk
AB  - Classic trade questions are reconsidered by generalizing a factor-proportions model to multiple countries, multi-stage production, and country-specific trade costs. We derive patterns of production specialization and trade for a matrix of countries that differ in relative endowments (columns) and trade costs (rows). We demonstrate how the ability to fragment production and/or a proportional change in all countries' trade costs alters these patterns. Production specialization and the volume of trade are higher with fragmentation for most countries but interestingly, for a large block of countries, these variables fall following fragmentation. Countries with moderate trade costs engage in market-oriented assembly, while those with lower trade costs engage in export-platform production. These two cases correspond to the concepts of horizontal and vertical affiliate production in the literature on multinational enterprises. Increases in specialization and the volume of trade accelerate as trade costs go to zero with and without fragmentation.
ER  -