International Trade in an Uncertain World
Working Paper 35416
DOI 10.3386/w35416
Issue Date
We develop a tractable quantitative model of international trade in which agents make bilateral investments in resilience under general equilibrium uncertainty. Under both complete and incomplete financial markets, we show that these bilateral investments solve a portfolio problem of choosing trade partners. Countries' risk profiles become determinants of trade flows, income and welfare, whose first moments are affected by the second moments of productivity and trade costs. Changes in global economic uncertainty have heterogeneous effects across countries, depending on how they affect real hedging opportunities. The opening of trade can raise or reduce income volatility, but is revealed-preferred to autarky.
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Copy CitationBenny Kleinman, Ernest Liu, Stephen J. Redding, and David Xu, "International Trade in an Uncertain World," NBER Working Paper 35416 (2026), https://doi.org/10.3386/w35416.Download Citation