The Case of the Missing Trade: Comment

This paper was published in American Economic Review 91/1, 2002, pp. 394-404.

The publication process of necessity rations the amount of information that can be included in a journal article. I have assembled this Web site as an appendix to my comment on Daniel Trefler’s important American Economic Review piece of December 1995. You should find sufficient information here to duplicate all of my calculations. You’ll also find working papers and appendices that lay out the theoretical bases of the estimating equations. If you have any comments on the analysis presented here, please contact me with your thoughts.

The text of this comment (in pdf format).

The text of an appendix to this comment (in pdf format). It includes two sections: a discussion of the scaling of variables and a derivation of equation (13b) in the comment.

SAS files to recreate the analysis of this comment. Daniel Trefler originally provided his data to me in SAS format, and these files are extensions and variations of that original program. Thanks to Professor Trefler for agreeing to publish the data and programs in this way.

Documentation on simulation results to illustrate the statistical properties of the sign-match exercise (in pdf format).

A graphic illustrating the increase in goodness of fit of Sign-HOV through adjustment to the factor scarcity measure (Figure 1 of the text).