A Product-Quality View of the Linder Hypothesis
从产品质量角度重新审视林德假说，发现该假说仅在行业层面成立，并用64国1995年数据证实：控制跨行业贸易因素后，人均收入相近的国家之间贸易更密集。
The Linder hypothesis has attracted substantial empirical research over decades. However, the evidence has failed to provide consistent support for it. This paper explains the failure. Building a theoretical framework in which, as in Linder's theory, product quality plays the central role, I show that the Linder hypothesis is formally derived but holds only when formulated as a sector-level prediction. This prediction is then estimated using a sample of 64 countries in 1995. The results support the sectoral Linder hypothesis: controlling for the effect of intersectoral determinants of trade, countries of similar income per capita trade more intensely with one another. © 2010 The President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.