Five Facts about Value-Added Exports and Implications for Macroeconomics and Trade Research

摘要

International trade data record the gross value of goods as they cross borders. This poses a challenge for researchers who want to connect canonical international trade and macroeconomic models, which are typically cast in value-added terms, with the data. The most common approach has been to treat gross trade data as if it is comparable to data on value added. In the past, this assumption was tolerable. Vertical specialization in trade-that is, the use of imports to produce exports-was limited in most countries (Hummels, Ishii, and Yi 2001). In other words, gross exports contained very nearly 100 percent domestic value added.