Revealing Comparative Advantage: Chaotic or Coherent Patterns Across Time and Sector and U.S. Trading Partner?

摘要: We map United States comparative advantage between 1980 and 1995, by trading partner region, using Balassa's export-based index of Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA). find: temporally stable ubiquitous US in differentiated producer goods (except disadvantage Japan); somewhat less sweeping standardized goods; chaotic diverse patterns RCA consumer (especially the Chinese market). Our most significant findings are surprisingly sharp geographical differences small across sub-sectors 1, 2, 3-digit SITC classifications - regional, but not sectoral, niche' specialization. The high overall variability regions indexes seems unrelated to obvious explanations such as proximity or lingual/historical ties US. In goods, correlates better with accounts trade diversion regional preferences for discrimination against exports. find only scant evidence increasing disaggregated commodity sub-groups indexes. Such is often prediction theories that based on vertical specialization, product differentiation, scale agglomeration economies.