The Missing Food Problem: Trade, Agriculture, and International Productivity Differences
研究了农业在贫穷国家生产力低、就业高、贸易少的现象，通过多国模型发现贸易放大劳动力市场扭曲的负面影响，贸易成本显著导致国际生产力差异，并揭示了农业在贸易收益中的额外渠道。
Agriculture in poor countries has low productivity, high employment, and negligible trade flows relative to other sectors. These facts motivate a multisector, open-economy view of international productivity differences. With a quantitative multicountry model featuring nonhomothetic preferences, multiple interrelated sectors, distorted labor markets, and costly trade, I find: trade amplifies the negative effect of labor market distortions; trade costs—large for poor countries, especially in agriculture—significantly contribute to international productivity differences; and explicitly modeling agriculture reveals additional channels through which poor countries may gain from trade.