Welfare Gains from the Variety Growth

Arbeitspapier

We estimate the variety gains of trade in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania following the fall of the iron curtain more than a quarter of a century ago. We apply the methodology of Feenstra (1994); Broda and Weinstein (2006); Ardelean and Lugovskyy (2010) and Soderbery (2015) to domestic and international trade data for the period 1988-1997. Although, there was a decline in the number of local varieties during this period, an increase in the number of import varieties from the EU more than outweighed this decline. The increasing variety of imported goods from EU countries substantially lowered the cost of living, resulting in welfare gains to consumers that range from 0.73% in Latvia to 1.28% of GDP per year in Estonia.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-92-79-99245-2
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: JRC Working Papers in Economics and Finance ; No. 2019/1

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Computable General Equilibrium Models ; Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation ; Empirical Studies of Trade ; Trade: Forecasting and Simulation ; Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity ; Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
• Subject: variety growth ; welfare gains ; trade integration ; iron curtain

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Kancs, d'Artis ; Persyn, Damiaan
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Publications Office of the European Union
• (where): Luxembourg
• (when): 2019

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.2760/028399
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/202307
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET