TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bernard,Andrew B.
AU  - Robertson,Raymond
AU  - Schott,Peter K.
TI  - A Note on the Empirical Implementation of the Lens Condition
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11448
PY  - 2005
Y2  - July 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11448
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11448.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andrew B. Bernard
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
100 Tuck Hall
Hanover, NH  03755
Tel: 603/646-0302
Fax: 603/646-0995
E-Mail: Andrew.B.Bernard@dartmouth.edu

Raymond Robertson
Department of Economics
Macalester College
1600 Grand Ave
St. Paul MN 55105
Tel: 6516966739
Fax: 6516966746
E-Mail: robertson@macalester.edu

Peter K. Schott
Yale School of Management
135 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
Tel: 203/436-4260
Fax: 203/432-6974
E-Mail: peter.schott@yale.edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2005-07-04
AB  - Deardorff [Journal of International Economics 36 (1994) 167-175] offers an intuitively appealing test for factor price equality (FPE). He demonstrates that FPE is impossible if the set (i.e., lens) of points defined by regional factor abundance vectors does not lie within the set of points defined by goods' input intensities. This note demonstrates that empirical implementation of the lens condition is problematic if the "true" number of either goods or regions is unknown. We show that satisfaction of the lens condition is more likely when goods are relatively disaggregate compared to regions.
ER  -