TY  - JOUR
AU  - Harrigan,James
TI  - Specialization and the Volume of Trade: Do the Data Obey the Laws?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8675
PY  - 2001
Y2  - December 2001
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8675
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8675.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James Harrigan
Department of Economics
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400182
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4182
Tel: 434-243-8354
Fax: 434-982-2904
E-Mail: harrigan@nber.org
AB  - The core subjects of trade theory are the pattern and volume of trade: which goods are traded by which countries, and how much of those goods are traded. The first part of the paper discusses evidence on comparative advantage, with an emphasis on carefully connecting theory models to data analyses. The second part of the chapter first considers the theoretical foundations of the gravity model, and then reviews the small number of papers that have tried to test, rather than simply use, the implications of gravity. Both parts of the paper yield the same conclusion: we are still in the very early stages of empirically understanding specialization and the volume of trade, but the work that has been done can serve as a starting point for further research.
ER  -