Unbalanced Trade: Is Growing Dispersion from Financial or Trade Reforms?
We study the reasons for the large, coincident increases in unbalanced international trade and overall trade from 1970 to 2019. We show that these two salient features—a rise in net and gross international trade—are largely a consequence of a reduction in intratemporal trade barriers rather than a substantial reduction in the frictions on intertemporal trade or greater asymmetries in business cycles. Beyond explaining changes in the distribution of gross and net trade, the decline in intratemporal trade frictions is consistent with a fall in the dispersion across countries in other key macro time series, including the real exchange rate, terms of trade, export-import ratio, relative spending, and relative GDP.
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