International Trade in Durable Goods: Understanding Volatility, Cyclicality, and Elasticities

55 Pages Posted: 15 Feb 2008 Last revised: 1 Oct 2022

See all articles by Charles M. Engel

Charles M. Engel

University of Wisconsin - Madison - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of Washington - Department of Economics

Jian Wang

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen; Shenzhen Finance Institute

Date Written: February 2008

Abstract

Data for OECD countries document: 1. imports and exports are about three times as volatile as GDP; 2. imports and exports are pro-cyclical, and positively correlated with each other; 3. net exports are counter-cyclical. Standard models fail to replicate the behavior of imports and exports, though they can match net exports relatively well. Inspired by the fact that a large fraction of international trade is in durable goods, we propose a two-country two-sector model, in which durable goods are traded across countries. Our model can match the business cycle statistics on the volatility and comovement of the imports and exports relatively well. In addition, the model with trade in durables helps to understand the empirical regularity noted in the trade literature: home and foreign goods are highly substitutable in the long run, but the short run elasticity of substitution is low. We note that durable consumption also has implications for the appropriate measures of consumption and prices to assess risk-sharing opportunities, as in the empirical work on the Backus-Smith puzzle. The fact that our model can match data better in multiple dimensions suggests that trade in durable goods may be an important element in open-economy macro models.

Suggested Citation

Engel, Charles M. and Wang, Jian, International Trade in Durable Goods: Understanding Volatility, Cyclicality, and Elasticities (February 2008). NBER Working Paper No. w13814, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1093652

Charles M. Engel (Contact Author)

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Jian Wang

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen ( email )

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Shenzhen Finance Institute ( email )