Revealed Specialization: Evidence on U.S. International Services

This paper is an investigation of the comparative advantage structure of United States (U.S.) international trade in services. It appears that the U.S. has a strong comparative advantage in knowledge-based services. For this study, the author adopts the Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) index to analyze the comparative advantage structure, and demonstrates that variance in the RCA deviations indicates a similarity in the export structure between the U.S. and the world. This study also focuses on the role of multinational companies, linking microeconomic entities and the macroeconomic surroundings.