The Global Welfare Impact of China: Trade Integration and Technological Change

70 Pages Posted: 5 Sep 2013

See all articles by Julian di Giovanni

Julian di Giovanni

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Andrei A. Levchenko

University of Michigan - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Jing Zhang

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 4, 2013

Abstract

This paper evaluates the global welfare impact of China's trade integration and technological change in a quantitative Ricardian-Heckscher-Ohlin model implemented on 75 countries. We simulate two alternative productivity growth scenarios: a "balanced" one in which China's productivity grows at the same rate in each sector, and an "unbalanced" one in which China's comparative disadvantage sectors catch up disproportionately faster to the world productivity frontier. Contrary to a well-known conjecture (Samuelson 2004), the large majority of countries in the sample, including the developed ones, experience an order of magnitude larger welfare gains when China's productivity growth is biased towards its comparative disadvantage sectors. We demonstrate both analytically and quantitatively that this finding is driven by the inherently multilateral nature of world trade. As a separate but related exercise we quantify the worldwide welfare gains from China's trade integration.

Keywords: China, productivity growth, international trade

JEL Classification: F11, F43, O33, O47

Suggested Citation

di Giovanni, Julian and Levchenko, Andrei A. and Zhang, Jing, The Global Welfare Impact of China: Trade Integration and Technological Change (September 4, 2013). FRB of Chicago Working Paper No. 2013-08, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2320614 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2320614

Julian Di Giovanni

Federal Reserve Banks - Federal Reserve Bank of New York ( email )

33 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10045
United States

HOME PAGE: http://julian.digiovanni.ca

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

HOME PAGE: http://julian.digiovanni.ca

Andrei A. Levchenko

University of Michigan - Department of Economics ( email )

611 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220
United States

HOME PAGE: http://alevchenko.com

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

Jing Zhang (Contact Author)

University of Michigan at Ann Arbor ( email )

500 S. State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
United States

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