Errors-in-variables, supply side effects, and price elasticities in foreign trade

Errors-in-Variables, Supply Side Effects, and Price Elasticities in Foreign Trade.—Previous estimates of price elasticities in foreign trade are likely to be biased upward due to errors-in-variables, omission of supply side influences, aggregation, bad measurement of price competitiveness, and misspecification of the estimation equations. This paper incorporates the supply side into the traditional demand for export equation and uses a panel data approach for OECD manufacturing to provide unbiased estimates of price elasticities. The estimates indicate that the sum of the absolute import and export price elasticities is close to one and that currency depreciations are likely to adversely affect trade balances in the long run due to supply side influences. JEL no. E3, F1, F4