Recent theoretical work on international trade emphasizes the importance of trade elasticity as the fundamental statistic needed to conduct welfare analysis. Eaton and Kortum (2002) proposed a two-step method to estimate this parameter, where exporter fixed effects are regressed on proxies for...

We propose a simple method to identify the effects of unilateral and non-discriminatory trade policies on bilateral trade within a theoretically-consistent empirical gravity model. Specifically, we argue that structural gravity estimations should be performed with data that include not only...

Feenstra (1994) developed, and Broda and Weinstein (2006) refined, a structural estimator to estimate import demand and supply elasticities. Working through the first principles of the methodology from Leamer (1981), this paper analyzes and improves the technique to provide a unified estimator...

This paper uses bilateral data on 420 merchandise trade flows between 21 industrial countries are used to estimate standard trade equations. The data set of over 11,000 observations allows the underlying elasticities to be estimated with considerable precision. Remarkably, a single specification...

Estimates of the trade elasticity based on actual trade policy changes are scarce, and the few that exist are all over the place. This paper offers a setting where an exogenous increase in a border tax can be used to estimate the trade elasticity. It shows theoretically and empirically that if...