A widely held view is that openness to international trade leads to higher GDP volatility, as trade increases specialization and hence exposure to sector-specific shocks. We revisit the common wisdom and argue that when country-wide shocks are important, openness to international trade can lower...

We analyze how trade affects aggregate volatility using a multi-country, multiindustry, and multi-destination framework. We decompose aggregate output growth risk into destination risk, origin risk, and idiosyncratic risk (and their covariances). We then use this framework to run counterfactuals...