Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility

We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. We build a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor, and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in either fe...

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Main Authors:	Do, Quy-Toan, Levchenko, Andrei A., Raddatz, Claudio
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Elsevier 2016
Subjects:	fertility trade integration comparative advantage
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23674

id	okr-10986-23674
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-236742021-04-23T14:04:16Z Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Raddatz, Claudio fertility trade integration comparative advantage We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. We build a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor, and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in either female-labor or male-labor intensive goods. The main prediction of the model is that countries with comparative advantage in female-labor intensive goods are characterized by lower fertility. This is because female wages, and therefore the opportunity cost of children are higher in those countries. We demonstrate empirically that countries with comparative advantage in industries employing primarily women exhibit lower fertility. We use a geography-based instrument for trade patterns to isolate the causal effect of comparative advantage on fertility. 2016-01-19T20:30:22Z 2016-01-19T20:30:22Z 2015-10-23 Journal Article Journal of Development Economics 0304-3878 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23674 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Elsevier Publications & Research :: Journal Article Publications & Research
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	fertility trade integration comparative advantage
spellingShingle	fertility trade integration comparative advantage Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Raddatz, Claudio Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility
description	We analyze theoretically and empirically the impact of comparative advantage in international trade on fertility. We build a model in which industries differ in the extent to which they use female relative to male labor, and countries are characterized by Ricardian comparative advantage in either female-labor or male-labor intensive goods. The main prediction of the model is that countries with comparative advantage in female-labor intensive goods are characterized by lower fertility. This is because female wages, and therefore the opportunity cost of children are higher in those countries. We demonstrate empirically that countries with comparative advantage in industries employing primarily women exhibit lower fertility. We use a geography-based instrument for trade patterns to isolate the causal effect of comparative advantage on fertility.
format	Journal Article
author	Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Raddatz, Claudio
author_facet	Do, Quy-Toan Levchenko, Andrei A. Raddatz, Claudio
author_sort	Do, Quy-Toan
title	Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility
title_short	Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility
title_full	Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility
title_fullStr	Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility
title_full_unstemmed	Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility
title_sort	comparative advantage, international trade, and fertility
publisher	Elsevier
publishDate	2016
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23674
_version_	1764454518609674240

Comparative Advantage, International Trade, and Fertility

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