Measuring Global and Regional Trade Integration in Terms of Concentration of Access

Autoren

• Edwards
• T.H.

Erscheinungsdatum

JEL Classification

Schlagworte

I apply concentration measures from the inequality literature — the Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient — to the measurement of global and regional integration, and show that these can be derived from the theoretical gravity model in the presence of unequal costs of access for firms from different locations to a particular market. Overall, comparing nine economies, I find that the United States is the most globalized on these measures, and India and China are the least globalized. The smaller EU economies, which are very open on standard measures, should probably be viewed as regionalized rather than globalized.