Collaborative Research: Geography, Trade, and Prices

合作研究：地理、贸易和价格

• 批准号: 0820536
• 负责人: Christian Broda
• 金额: $ 19.86万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-07-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0820536&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Geography; Trade; Prices

Geography, Trade, and PricesSBE-SES 0820536 and 0820462Broda and Weinstein, CollaborativeAt the heart of almost all explanations of why Americans benefit or lose from international trade is a notion that foreign goods should affect firms and consumers through their impact on domestic prices. Unfortunately, the data has not been kind to these theories. Studies have repeatedly found that domestic prices are hardly affected by foreign prices. Thus, one is left with a paradox. Although globalization seems anecdotally to be exerting profound effects on the US economy, the data seems to indicate that our borders insulate us almost completely from foreign price movements. Our project solves this puzzle by using vast amounts of US and Canadian barcode data. Previous studies relied on price indexes computed by governments or private price surveys of goods that were not necessarily internationally comparable. Our barcode data reveals that there is substantial heterogeneity in the set of goods consumed across cities in the US, even in extremely narrowly defined product categories such as "milk". This heterogeneity enables producers to charge different prices for these goods across space and substantially insulates them from price changes charged by other producers. Not surprisingly, there are also substantial differences in the composition of goods consumed in Canada and the US. Brands and models differ to such an extent that only about 10 percent of the goods consumed are identical. These two facts help explain why borders loomed so large in previous work. When comparing aggregate indexes across countries, researchers typically compared average price movements of largely disjoint sets of goods. Movements in the price of Coca Cola in the US might perfectly mirror movement of Coca Cola in Canada, but if Statistics Canada were only including RC Cola in their price indexes, the effects would appear much smaller. Our preliminary results suggest that international price differences for the same good tend to be only slightly larger across borders than they are within countries, but the borders seem much larger if one uses (poor) data that compares one set of goods in one country with another set of goods in a different country. This heterogeneity of goods also helps us to understand how price shocks are transmitted across borders. Again the barcode data reveals that much of the importance of the border in this transmission is due to an aggregation bias. If one compares identical goods across the border, price changes in Canada translate very rapidly into price movements in the US. In other words, the project demonstrates that international price movements have rapid and large impacts on US prices. However, if one were to look at price transmission using indices, one would obtain the opposite conclusion. We intend to disseminate the results from this research through the publication of articles and the participation in conferences. Moreover, we will work with statistical agencies and monetary authorities to help improve the measurement of prices and formulation of policy. This research will also have a cross-disciplinary/cross-institutional dimension. Some of the work will be joint with Dr. Ephraim Leibtag at the Department of Agriculture. We expect that our work will be useful for people interested in understanding the impact of globalization on unskilled workers as well as on pricing behavior.

地理，贸易和价格SBE-SES 0820536和0820462 Broda和Weinstein，合作几乎所有关于美国人从国际贸易中受益或损失的解释的核心都是一种观念，即外国商品应该通过对国内价格的影响来影响公司和消费者。不幸的是，数据对这些理论并不友好。研究多次发现，国内价格几乎不受国外价格的影响。因此，留下了一个悖论。尽管全球化似乎对美国经济产生了深远的影响，但数据似乎表明，我们的边界几乎完全将我们与外国价格波动隔离开来。我们的项目通过使用大量的美国和加拿大条形码数据来解决这个难题。以前的研究依赖于政府计算的价格指数或对不一定具有国际可比性的商品进行的私人价格调查。我们的条形码数据显示，美国各城市消费的商品组合存在很大的异质性，即使是在定义非常狭窄的产品类别中，如“牛奶”。这种异质性使生产者能够在不同的空间对这些商品收取不同的价格，并使它们与其他生产者收取的价格变化基本绝缘。毫不奇怪，加拿大和美国消费的商品构成也存在巨大差异。品牌和型号的差异如此之大，以至于只有大约10%的消费品是相同的。 这两个事实有助于解释为什么边界在以前的工作中显得如此之大。在比较各国的综合指数时，研究人员通常比较基本上不相交的商品组合的平均价格变动。可口可乐在美国的价格变动可能完全反映了可口可乐在加拿大的价格变动，但如果加拿大统计局只将RC可乐纳入其价格指数，其影响似乎要小得多。我们的初步结果表明，同一商品的国际价格差异往往只是略大于国家内部的差异，但如果使用（差）数据比较一个国家的一组商品和另一个国家的另一组商品，边界似乎要大得多。商品的这种异质性也有助于我们理解价格冲击是如何跨境传递的。条形码数据再次揭示，在这种传输中，边界的重要性很大程度上是由于聚合偏差。如果一个人在边境上比较相同的商品，加拿大的价格变化很快就会转化为美国的价格变动。换句话说，该项目表明，国际价格变动对美国价格产生了迅速而巨大的影响。然而，如果用指数来研究价格传导，就会得出相反的结论。我们打算通过发表文章和参加会议来传播这项研究的结果。此外，我们将与统计机构和货币当局合作，帮助改进价格的衡量和政策的制定。这项研究还将具有跨学科/跨机构的特点。一些工作将与农业部的Ephraim Leibtag博士联合进行。我们希望我们的工作对那些有兴趣了解全球化对非熟练工人以及定价行为的影响的人有用。