Robert C Feenstra
Biographic Data
| ID | 1083016 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert C Feenstra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert C |
| FAMILY NAME | Feenstra |
| SIGNATURE | FEENSTRA R C |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Bureau of Economic Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3433-7763 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 189 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1952 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
What is the Price of Tea in China? Goods Prices and Availability in Chinese Cities
We examine the price and variety of a sample of consumer goods at the barcode level in cities within China. Unlike the position in the United States, in China the prices of goods tend to be lower in larger cities. We explain that difference between the countries by the more uneven spatial distribution of manufacturers’ sales and retailers in China, and we confirm the pro-competitive effect of city size on reducing markups there. In both countries…
In Search of the Armington Elasticity
How big is the elasticity of substitution between goods from different countries—the Armington elasticity? Estimates of the macroelasticity between home and imported goods are often smaller than the microelasticity between foreign sources of imports. Using new, highly disaggregate U.S. production data matched to imports and simulated data from a Melitz-style model with nested CES preferences, we explore estimation techniques for the two elasticit…
Alternative Sources of the Gains from International Trade: Variety, Creative Destruction, and Markups
The modern theory of international trade identifies several additional sources of the gains from international trade beyond the gains from traditional comparative advantage. These are the gains from importing new product varieties; the gains from "creative destruction" as the relatively most productive firms expand their output by exporting while the less-productive firms exit; and the gains from competition between firms in different countries, …
Globalization, Markups, and US Welfare
This paper estimates the impact of globalization on markups, and the effect of changing markups on US welfare, in a monopolistic competition model. We work with symmetric translog preferences, which allow for endogenous markups and firm entry and exit, thereby changing product variety. We find that between 1992 and 2005, US import shares rose and US firms exited, leading to an implied fall in markups, while variety went up because of imports. US …
The Next Generation of the Penn World Table
We describe the theory and practice of real GDP comparisons across countries and over time. Version 8 of the Penn World Table expands on previous versions in three respects. First, in addition to comparisons of living standards using components of real GDP on the expenditure side, we provide a measure of productive capacity, called real GDP on the output side. Second, growth rates are benchmarked to multiple years of cross-country price data so t…
International Prices and Endogenous Quality
The unit values of internationally traded goods are heavily influenced by quality. We model this in an extended monopolistic competition framework where, in addition to choosing price, firms simultaneously choose quality subject to nonhomothetic demand. We estimate quality and quality-adjusted price indexes for 185 countries over 1984–2011. Our estimates are less sensitive to assumptions about the extensive margin of firms than are purely “demand…
Exports and Credit Constraints under Incomplete Information: Theory and Evidence from China
This paper examines why credit constraints for domestic and exporting firms arise in a setting where banks do not observe firms' productivities. To maintain incentive compatibility, banks lend below the amount that firms need for optimal production. The longer time needed for export shipments induces a tighter credit constraint on exporters than on purely domestic firms. In our application to Chinese firms, we find that the credit constraint is m…
New reflections on some law professors at Leiden between c. 1580 and c. 1715
The present reflections originate from a retrospective view of Seventeenth-Century Leyden law professors and their influence on the development of the civil law , by R. Feenstra and C.J.D. Waal (1975), a study mainly concerning Arnold Vinnius (1588–1657) and Johannes Voet (1647–1713). They supplement that work with references to bibliographic studies since 1975 and with some rectifications. An important part of the reflections, however, concerns …
Who Shrunk China? Puzzles in the Measurement of Real GDP
The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones. We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate are higher than rural ones, and the use of an expenditure-weighted rather than an output-weighted measure of GDP. Taking all these together, we estimate tha…
Estimating Real Production and Expenditures across Nations: A Proposal for Improving the Penn World Tables
We propose a new approach to the international comparison of real GDP, as measured from the output-side. The traditional Gary-Khamis system, which measures real GDP from the expenditure-side, is modified to include differences in the terms of trade between countries. It is shown that this system has a strictly positive solution under mild assumptions. On the basis of a sample of 151 countries in 1996, it is shown that differences between real GDP…
Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths: Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan
The economies of South Korea and Taiwan in the second half of the twentieth century are to scholars of economic development what the economy of Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries is to economic historians. This book, first published in 2006, is a collaboration between a leading trade economist and a leading economic sociologist specializing in East Asia, and offers an explanation of the development paths of post-World Wa…
Border Effects and the Gravity Equation: Consistent Methods for Estimation
The CES monopolistic competition model is an especially convenient way to derive the gravity equation, especially when we allow for transport costs and other trade barriers. In that case, we need to take account of the overall price indexes in each country. We review three methods to do so: using published data on price indexes; using the computational method of Anderson and van Wincoop; or using country fixed effects to measure the price indexes…
The Impact of International Trade on Wages
Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing debate among policymakers and economists. Two competing theories have emerged to explain this phenomenon, one focusing on international trade and labor market…
Using the gravity equation to differentiate among alternative theories of trade
The simple gravity equation explains a great deal about the data on bilateral trade flows and is consistent with several theoretical models of trade. We argue that alternative theories nevertheless predict subtle differences in key parameter values, depending on whether goods are homogeneous or differentiated and whether or not there are barriers to entry. Our empirical work for differentiated goods delivers results consistent with the theoretica…
Putting Things in Order: Trade Dynamics and Product Cycles
We develop a procedure to rank-order objects using censored panel data sets. We illustrate this by ranking countries and commodities using disaggregated American import data and find evidence that countries and commodities can be ranked. Countries habitually begin to export goods to the United States according to an ordering; goods are also exported in order. We estimate these orderings using a methodology, that takes account of the fact that mos…
Neither States Nor Markets: The Role of Economic Organization in Asian Development
This article shows that economic organization has independent and direct effects on the course of economic development. Most existing theories of economic development ignore the dynamic role of inter-firm interactions and, instead, stress state policies and macro-economic forces as the decisive factors creating a country's industrial structure. Our research shows that developing economies have emergent organizational dimensions that, once they be…
The Impact of Outsourcing and High-Technology Capital on Wages: Estimates For the United States, 1979-1990
We estimate the relative influence of trade versus technology on wages in a “large-country” setting, where technological change affects product prices. Trade is measured by the foreign outsourcing of intermediate inputs, while technological change is measured by expenditures on high-technology capital such as computers. The estimation procedure we develop, which modifies the conventional “price regression,” is able to distinguish whether product …
Testing endogenous growth in South Korea and Taiwan
Legal Scholarship and Doctrines of Private Laws, 13th-18th Centuries
Journal Article Legal Scholarship and Doctrines of Private Laws, 13th–18th Centuries Get access Feenstra Robert, Legal Scholarship and Doctrines of Private Laws, 13th-18th Centuries. Aldershot: Variorum Press, 1996. x, 329 pp. $98.95. M.N.S. Sellers M.N.S. Sellers University of Baltimore Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 42, Issue 1, January 1998, Pages 89–90, https:…
Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy
The last few decades have seen a spectacular integration of the global economy through trade. The rising integration of world markets has brought with it a disintegration of the production process, however, in which manufacturing or services activities done abroad are combined with those performed at home. The author compares several different measures of foreign outsourcing and argues that they have all increased since the 1970s. He also conside…
Foreign direct investment and relative wages: Evidence from Mexico's maquiladoras
Kaiserliche Lehnrechte
Exact Hedonic Price Indexes
IPG C926 MIJGLG COU2IIWGL2 CP0026 CP9LSCGLI21C2 q:LGCflfl 12 COU2qeLGq IU E6GU2L9 (Jaa2Y (12 O WG92flLG 9 cpsue lu cowbneL bLice2 (cole JaQe C9t4ML!J4 J892Y O A9L!0fl2 flL9PIG 002 12 OOLOU (iaao) HG0UC W8JOQ2 jJ9A6 P&GLJ OUiCi9II 9Qob6Q ju e JJJG G9Lfie2 gbbJicsiou2 SLG qi2Cfl22Gq !U eL1IICPG2 (jaaoy suq g cowbLepeu2iAe 9bbJic9Uou CGLL9IU L$2flJ2 04 VuqGL20u qe b9JW9 uq jp1226 (J a5 MPO woqej 1UIA1fl9J2 92 04 JuqiAiqrTgJ2 MIJJCP 9L6 9L69Gq 0 Op9i…
How Costly is Protectionism
How costly is protectionism? This paper begins from a U.S. perspective, examining the costs to both the U.S. and other countries from U.S. protectionism. It emphasizes that substantial costs are imposed on foreign countries by U.S. protectionism. These costs result from the highly selective nature of protection in particular industries and against particular exporting countries. No discussion of the costs of protection would be complete without m…
Trade and Uneven Growth
Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy
The last few decades have seen a spectacular integration of the global economy through trade. The rising integration of world markets has brought with it a disintegration of the production process, however, in which manufacturing or services activities done abroad are combined with those performed at home. The author compares several different measures of foreign outsourcing and argues that they have all increased since the 1970s. He also conside…
Globalization, Markups, and US Welfare
This paper estimates the impact of globalization on markups, and the effect of changing markups on US welfare, in a monopolistic competition model. We work with symmetric translog preferences, which allow for endogenous markups and firm entry and exit, thereby changing product variety. We find that between 1992 and 2005, US import shares rose and US firms exited, leading to an implied fall in markups, while variety went up because of imports. US …
Border Effects and the Gravity Equation: Consistent Methods for Estimation
The CES monopolistic competition model is an especially convenient way to derive the gravity equation, especially when we allow for transport costs and other trade barriers. In that case, we need to take account of the overall price indexes in each country. We review three methods to do so: using published data on price indexes; using the computational method of Anderson and van Wincoop; or using country fixed effects to measure the price indexes…
Neither States Nor Markets: The Role of Economic Organization in Asian Development
This article shows that economic organization has independent and direct effects on the course of economic development. Most existing theories of economic development ignore the dynamic role of inter-firm interactions and, instead, stress state policies and macro-economic forces as the decisive factors creating a country's industrial structure. Our research shows that developing economies have emergent organizational dimensions that, once they be…
What is the Price of Tea in China? Goods Prices and Availability in Chinese Cities
We examine the price and variety of a sample of consumer goods at the barcode level in cities within China. Unlike the position in the United States, in China the prices of goods tend to be lower in larger cities. We explain that difference between the countries by the more uneven spatial distribution of manufacturers’ sales and retailers in China, and we confirm the pro-competitive effect of city size on reducing markups there. In both countries…
Who Shrunk China? Puzzles in the Measurement of Real GDP
The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones. We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate are higher than rural ones, and the use of an expenditure-weighted rather than an output-weighted measure of GDP. Taking all these together, we estimate tha…
Testing endogenous growth in South Korea and Taiwan
Trade and Uneven Growth
Alternative Sources of the Gains from International Trade: Variety, Creative Destruction, and Markups
The modern theory of international trade identifies several additional sources of the gains from international trade beyond the gains from traditional comparative advantage. These are the gains from importing new product varieties; the gains from "creative destruction" as the relatively most productive firms expand their output by exporting while the less-productive firms exit; and the gains from competition between firms in different countries, …
Tariffs, Technology Transfer, and Welfare
It is found that the welfare gain per unit of revenue raised is maximized for an export tariff on technology transfer, followed by an import tariff on goods, with an export tariff on goods the poorest policy alternative. These results are derived within a monopolistic competition model, where the production of any good requires some initial research and development (R&D), and technology transfer occurs when R&D is done in one country for producti…
A Quelle Epoque Les Provinces-Unies Sont-Elles Devenues Independantes En Droit a L'Egard Du Saint-Empire
Tariffs, Technology Transfer, and Welfare
It is found that the welfare gain per unit of revenue raised is maximized for an export tariff on technology transfer, followed by an import tariff on goods, with an export tariff on goods the poorest policy alternative. These results are derived within a monopolistic competition model, where the production of any good requires some initial research and development (R&D), and technology transfer occurs when R&D is done in one country for producti…
Trade and Uneven Growth
How Costly is Protectionism
How costly is protectionism? This paper begins from a U.S. perspective, examining the costs to both the U.S. and other countries from U.S. protectionism. It emphasizes that substantial costs are imposed on foreign countries by U.S. protectionism. These costs result from the highly selective nature of protection in particular industries and against particular exporting countries. No discussion of the costs of protection would be complete without m…
Kaiserliche Lehnrechte
Exact Hedonic Price Indexes
IPG C926 MIJGLG COU2IIWGL2 CP0026 CP9LSCGLI21C2 q:LGCflfl 12 COU2qeLGq IU E6GU2L9 (Jaa2Y (12 O WG92flLG 9 cpsue lu cowbneL bLice2 (cole JaQe C9t4ML!J4 J892Y O A9L!0fl2 flL9PIG 002 12 OOLOU (iaao) HG0UC W8JOQ2 jJ9A6 P&GLJ OUiCi9II 9Qob6Q ju e JJJG G9Lfie2 gbbJicsiou2 SLG qi2Cfl22Gq !U eL1IICPG2 (jaaoy suq g cowbLepeu2iAe 9bbJic9Uou CGLL9IU L$2flJ2 04 VuqGL20u qe b9JW9 uq jp1226 (J a5 MPO woqej 1UIA1fl9J2 92 04 JuqiAiqrTgJ2 MIJJCP 9L6 9L69Gq 0 Op9i…
Foreign direct investment and relative wages: Evidence from Mexico's maquiladoras
Legal Scholarship and Doctrines of Private Laws, 13th-18th Centuries
Journal Article Legal Scholarship and Doctrines of Private Laws, 13th–18th Centuries Get access Feenstra Robert, Legal Scholarship and Doctrines of Private Laws, 13th-18th Centuries. Aldershot: Variorum Press, 1996. x, 329 pp. $98.95. M.N.S. Sellers M.N.S. Sellers University of Baltimore Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar American Journal of Legal History, Volume 42, Issue 1, January 1998, Pages 89–90, https:…
Integration of Trade and Disintegration of Production in the Global Economy
The last few decades have seen a spectacular integration of the global economy through trade. The rising integration of world markets has brought with it a disintegration of the production process, however, in which manufacturing or services activities done abroad are combined with those performed at home. The author compares several different measures of foreign outsourcing and argues that they have all increased since the 1970s. He also conside…
The Impact of Outsourcing and High-Technology Capital on Wages: Estimates For the United States, 1979-1990
We estimate the relative influence of trade versus technology on wages in a “large-country” setting, where technological change affects product prices. Trade is measured by the foreign outsourcing of intermediate inputs, while technological change is measured by expenditures on high-technology capital such as computers. The estimation procedure we develop, which modifies the conventional “price regression,” is able to distinguish whether product …
Testing endogenous growth in South Korea and Taiwan
Putting Things in Order: Trade Dynamics and Product Cycles
We develop a procedure to rank-order objects using censored panel data sets. We illustrate this by ranking countries and commodities using disaggregated American import data and find evidence that countries and commodities can be ranked. Countries habitually begin to export goods to the United States according to an ordering; goods are also exported in order. We estimate these orderings using a methodology, that takes account of the fact that mos…
Neither States Nor Markets: The Role of Economic Organization in Asian Development
This article shows that economic organization has independent and direct effects on the course of economic development. Most existing theories of economic development ignore the dynamic role of inter-firm interactions and, instead, stress state policies and macro-economic forces as the decisive factors creating a country's industrial structure. Our research shows that developing economies have emergent organizational dimensions that, once they be…
Using the gravity equation to differentiate among alternative theories of trade
The simple gravity equation explains a great deal about the data on bilateral trade flows and is consistent with several theoretical models of trade. We argue that alternative theories nevertheless predict subtle differences in key parameter values, depending on whether goods are homogeneous or differentiated and whether or not there are barriers to entry. Our empirical work for differentiated goods delivers results consistent with the theoretica…
Border Effects and the Gravity Equation: Consistent Methods for Estimation
The CES monopolistic competition model is an especially convenient way to derive the gravity equation, especially when we allow for transport costs and other trade barriers. In that case, we need to take account of the overall price indexes in each country. We review three methods to do so: using published data on price indexes; using the computational method of Anderson and van Wincoop; or using country fixed effects to measure the price indexes…
The Impact of International Trade on Wages
Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing debate among policymakers and economists. Two competing theories have emerged to explain this phenomenon, one focusing on international trade and labor market…
Emergent Economies, Divergent Paths: Economic Organization and International Trade in South Korea and Taiwan
The economies of South Korea and Taiwan in the second half of the twentieth century are to scholars of economic development what the economy of Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteeth centuries is to economic historians. This book, first published in 2006, is a collaboration between a leading trade economist and a leading economic sociologist specializing in East Asia, and offers an explanation of the development paths of post-World Wa…
Estimating Real Production and Expenditures across Nations: A Proposal for Improving the Penn World Tables
We propose a new approach to the international comparison of real GDP, as measured from the output-side. The traditional Gary-Khamis system, which measures real GDP from the expenditure-side, is modified to include differences in the terms of trade between countries. It is shown that this system has a strictly positive solution under mild assumptions. On the basis of a sample of 151 countries in 1996, it is shown that differences between real GDP…
New reflections on some law professors at Leiden between c. 1580 and c. 1715
The present reflections originate from a retrospective view of Seventeenth-Century Leyden law professors and their influence on the development of the civil law , by R. Feenstra and C.J.D. Waal (1975), a study mainly concerning Arnold Vinnius (1588–1657) and Johannes Voet (1647–1713). They supplement that work with references to bibliographic studies since 1975 and with some rectifications. An important part of the reflections, however, concerns …
Who Shrunk China? Puzzles in the Measurement of Real GDP
The latest World Bank estimates of real GDP per capita for China are significantly lower than previous ones. We review possible sources of this puzzle and conclude that it reflects a combination of factors, including substitution bias in consumption, reliance on urban prices which we estimate are higher than rural ones, and the use of an expenditure-weighted rather than an output-weighted measure of GDP. Taking all these together, we estimate tha…
International Prices and Endogenous Quality
The unit values of internationally traded goods are heavily influenced by quality. We model this in an extended monopolistic competition framework where, in addition to choosing price, firms simultaneously choose quality subject to nonhomothetic demand. We estimate quality and quality-adjusted price indexes for 185 countries over 1984–2011. Our estimates are less sensitive to assumptions about the extensive margin of firms than are purely “demand…
Exports and Credit Constraints under Incomplete Information: Theory and Evidence from China
This paper examines why credit constraints for domestic and exporting firms arise in a setting where banks do not observe firms' productivities. To maintain incentive compatibility, banks lend below the amount that firms need for optimal production. The longer time needed for export shipments induces a tighter credit constraint on exporters than on purely domestic firms. In our application to Chinese firms, we find that the credit constraint is m…
The Next Generation of the Penn World Table
We describe the theory and practice of real GDP comparisons across countries and over time. Version 8 of the Penn World Table expands on previous versions in three respects. First, in addition to comparisons of living standards using components of real GDP on the expenditure side, we provide a measure of productive capacity, called real GDP on the output side. Second, growth rates are benchmarked to multiple years of cross-country price data so t…
Globalization, Markups, and US Welfare
This paper estimates the impact of globalization on markups, and the effect of changing markups on US welfare, in a monopolistic competition model. We work with symmetric translog preferences, which allow for endogenous markups and firm entry and exit, thereby changing product variety. We find that between 1992 and 2005, US import shares rose and US firms exited, leading to an implied fall in markups, while variety went up because of imports. US …
In Search of the Armington Elasticity
How big is the elasticity of substitution between goods from different countries—the Armington elasticity? Estimates of the macroelasticity between home and imported goods are often smaller than the microelasticity between foreign sources of imports. Using new, highly disaggregate U.S. production data matched to imports and simulated data from a Melitz-style model with nested CES preferences, we explore estimation techniques for the two elasticit…
Economics (22 works) · Global trade and economics (17 works) · Econometrics (10 works) · Microeconomics (10 works) · Macroeconomics (9 works) · Geography (7 works) · International economics (7 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Economic Growth and Productivity (5 works)