The US Gains From Trade: Valuation Using the Demand for Foreign Factor Services

About eight cents out of every dollar spent in the United States is spent on imports. What if, because of a wall or some other extreme policy intervention, imports were to remain on the other side of the US border? How much would US consumers be willing to pay to prevent this hypothetical policy cha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Costinot, Arnaud (Author), Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés (Author)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: American Economic Association, 2020-07-08T22:04:18Z.
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Summary:About eight cents out of every dollar spent in the United States is spent on imports. What if, because of a wall or some other extreme policy intervention, imports were to remain on the other side of the US border? How much would US consumers be willing to pay to prevent this hypothetical policy change from taking place? The answer to this question represents the welfare cost from autarky or, equivalently, the welfare gains from trade. In this article, we discuss how to evaluate these gains using estimates of the demand for foreign factor services.