Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics
Working Papers,
Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics
No 15-2022: Gains from Trade and the Food Engel Curve
Farid Farrokhi (ffarrokh@purdue.edu), David Jinkins (dj.eco@cbs.dk) and Chong Xiang (cxiang@purdue.edu)
Additional contact information
Farid Farrokhi: Purdue University
David Jinkins: Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School, Postal: Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics, Porcelaenshaven 16 A. 1. floor, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Chong Xiang: Purdue University
Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which gains-from-trade predictions from commonly-used trade theories are consistent with observed household consumption decisions. Our approach is based on inference from household-level estimation of food Engel curves in the US and in a few other countries. For a given price index as the deflator of income, deviations from food Engel curves indicate how biased that price index is relative to the true household price index. We construct open-economy price indices based on trade theory and data, evaluate their biases according to our approach, and compare them with the bias of official CPI statistics. We find that theory-consistent open-economy price indices that account for industry-level heterogeneity and input-output linkages tend to eliminate a large fraction of the bias of CPI.
Keywords: Food Engel Curves; Price Indices; Household-level Consumption; Gains from Trade
Language: English
59 pages, October 29, 2022
Full text files
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