Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

PDF

Selected Works

Luca De Benedictis

Balassa Index

Articles 1 - 1 of 1

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Overall Specialization Empirics: Techniques And Applications, Luca De Benedictis, Massimo Tamberi Dec 2003

Overall Specialization Empirics: Techniques And Applications, Luca De Benedictis, Massimo Tamberi

Luca De Benedictis

It is customary in the empirical trade literature to analyze specialization patterns of countries using Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) measures. This paper explores the informational content of the most commonly used RCA index: the Balassa (1965) Index of RCA.

After describing the properties of the Balassa Index, we propose a research strategy based on descriptive statistics, kernel density estimation, concentration and Markov stationarity methods in order to analyze the dynamics of overall specialization.