Skip to main content

Costas Arkolakis Publications

Publish Date
Journal of Economic Perspectives
Abstract

What do recent advances in economic geography teach us about the spatial distribution of economic activity? We show that the equilibrium distribution of economic activity can be determined simply by the intersection of labor supply and demand curves. We discuss how to estimate these curves and highlight the importance of global geography—the connections between locations through the trading network—in determining how various policy relevant changes to geography shape the spatial economy.

Review of Economic Studies
Abstract

Each year in the US, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on transportation infrastructure and billions of hours are lost in traffic. We develop a quantitative general equilibrium spatial framework featuring endogenous transportation costs and traffic congestion and apply it to evaluate the welfare impact of transportation infrastructure improvements. Our approach yields analytical expressions for transportation costs between any two locations, the traffic along each link of the transportation network, and the equilibrium distribution of economic activity across the economy, each as a function of the underlying quality of infrastructure and the strength of traffic congestion. We characterize the properties of such an equilibrium and show how the framework can be combined with traffic data to evaluate the impact of improving any segment of the infrastructure network. Applying our framework to both the US highway network and the Seattle road network, we find highly variable returns to investment across different links in the respective transportation networks, highlighting the importance of well-targeted infrastructure investment.

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
Abstract

To quantify trade frictions, we examine multiproduct exporters. We build a flexible general-equilibrium model and estimate market entry costs using Brazilian firm-product-destination data under rich demand and market access cost shocks. Our estimates show that additional products farther from a firm's core competency come at higher production costs, but there are substantive economies of scope in market access costs. Market access costs differ across destinations, falling more rapidly in scope at nearby regions and at destinations with fewer nontariff barriers. We evaluate a counterfactual scenario that harmonizes market access costs across destinations and find global welfare gains similar to eliminating all current tariffs.

Annual Review of Economics
Abstract

We review the literature that studies the dynamics of firms in foreign markets, at both the intensive and extensive margins, and their aggregate implications. We first summarize a set of micro facts on exporter entry, expansion, contraction, and exit and several macro facts about the response of aggregate trade flows to trade-policy and business-cycle shocks. We then present the canonical model developed to account for these facts and discuss its connection to the empirical evidence. We show how three model features—future uncertain profits, an investment in market access, and high depreciation of that access upon exit—generate transition dynamics and long-run aggregate outcomes from a cut in tariffs. The model and its extensions contribute to our understanding of trade integration and the evolution of future trade barriers. We discuss the key challenges faced by the canonical model, its possible extensions, and applications of the framework to recent global events.

Discussion Paper
Abstract

We study the role of European Immigration on local and aggregate economic growth in the United States between 1880 and 1920. We employ a big data approach and link, at the individual-level, information from the Population Census, the universe of patents and millions of historical immigration records. We find that immigrants were more prolific innovators than natives, and document large differences in innovation potential across nationalities and regions in the United States. To measure the importance of immigrants for the creation of new ideas and economic growth, we develop a new spatial model of growth through dissemination of knowledge and workers’ mobility. The model allows us to use our micro and regional empirical findings to measure immigrants’ innovation human capital and the degree of knowledge diffusion which regulates scale effects. We quantitatively analyze the effects of imposing major immigration restrictions on American economic growth in the 19th and early 20th century. We find large, accumulating, losses from these restrictions. Both the scale effects and the exclusion of high-human capital immigrants contribute significantly to these losses.

Journal of Political Economy
Abstract

We study the theoretical properties and counterfactual predictions of a large class of general equilibrium trade and economic geography models. By combining aggregate factor supply and demand functions with market-clearing conditions, we prove that existence, uniqueness, and—given observed trade flows—the counterfactual predictions of any model within this class depend only on the demand and supply elasticities (“gravity constants”). Using a new “model-implied” instrumental variables approach, we estimate these gravity constants and use these estimates to compute the impact of a trade war between the United States and China.

Abstract

We examine multi-product exporters and use firm-product-destination data to quantify export entry barriers. Our general-equilibrium model of multi-product firms generalizes earlier models. To match main facts about multi-product exporters, we estimate our model with rich demand and access cost shocks for Brazilian firms. The estimates document that additional products farther from a firm’s core competency incur higher unit costs, but face lower market access costs. We find that these market access costs differ across destinations and evaluate a scenario that standardizes market access between countries. The resulting welfare gains are similar to eliminating all current tariffs.