TY  - JOUR
AU  - Slaughter,Matthew J.
TI  - International Trade and Per Capita Income Convergence: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6557
PY  - 1998
Y2  - May 1998
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6557
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6557.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Matthew J. Slaughter
Tuck School of Business
Dartmouth College
100 Tuck Hall
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: 603/646-2939
Fax: 603/646-0995
E-Mail: matthew.j.slaughter@dartmouth.edu
AB  - In this paper I analyze whether international trade contributes to per capita income convergence across countries. The analysis focuses on four important post-1945 multilateral trade liberalizations.  To identify trade's effect on income dispersion, in each case I use a  difference-in-differences' approach which compares the convergence pattern among the liberalizing countries before and after liberalization with the convergence pattern among randomly chosen control countries before and after liberalization.  My main empirical result is that trade liberalization did not trigger convergence in any of the four cases.  If anything, trade seems to have caused income divergence.
ER  -