2004 Jonathan Eaton and Samuel Kortum “Technology, Geography, and Trade” скачать в хорошем качестве

2004 Jonathan Eaton and Samuel Kortum “Technology, Geography, and Trade”

Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum “Technology, Geography, and Trade” Why do countries export the goods they do — and how large are the gains from trade? Classical trade theory emphasized comparative advantage driven by productivity differences. Empirical gravity models described trade flows remarkably well. But for decades, theory and empirics remained only loosely connected. Eaton and Kortum unified them. They developed a stochastic Ricardian model in which countries draw productivity levels across goods from probability distributions. Trade costs are explicitly incorporated, and countries source goods from the lowest-cost supplier. This structure generates a gravity equation grounded in theory. Bilateral trade shares reveal information about relative productivity and trade barriers. Trade data can therefore be used to estimate structural parameters and simulate counterfactual policy changes. The breakthrough was quantitative. Comparative advantage became empirically operational at scale. Welfare gains from trade could be computed consistently within a multi-country equilibrium framework. The 2004 Frisch Medal recognized one of the foundational contributions to modern quantitative trade theory. From this point forward, trade policy analysis became structurally grounded, globally integrated, and counterfactual-ready. Trade was no longer explained abstractly. It was measured and simulated within a coherent equilibrium system.