0000000000346185
AUTHOR
Takatoshi Tabuchi
Testing the Home Market Effects in a Multi-country World: The Theory
We extend the two-country model by Krugman (1980) to a multi-country set-up and show that the `home-market effect' highlighted with two countries does not readily extend to such a more general setting. In particular, we prove that the most important result, namely the disproportionate causation from demand to supply, generalizes only under the fairly implausible assumption of pairwise symmetric trade costs between all countries. We argue, therefore, that the implications of product differentiation for the structure of world trade are better characterized in terms of spatial (`accessibility') and non-spatial (`attraction') effects, and we provide a theory-based specification that suggests ho…
Changes in Transport and Non Transport Costs: Local vs. Global Impacts in a Spatial Network
We develop a multi-country Dixit-Stiglitz trade model and analyze how industry location and welfare respond to changes in: (i) transport frictions (e.g., infrastructure, transportation technology); and (ii) non-transport frictions (e.g., tariffs, standards and regulations). We show that changes in non-transport frictions, which are usually origin-destination specific, do not allow for any clear prediction as to changes in industry location and welfare; whereas changes in transport frictions, which are usually not origin-destination specific, may allow for such predictions. In particular, we show that reductions in transport frictions occurring at links around which the spatial network is lo…