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Abstract
This article compares the effects on global agricultural trade patterns of Asia-Pacific regional
economic integration led by the United States versus that by China. Our analysis
employs a Eaton-Kortum type model in which agricultural producers have access to technology
with heterogeneous productivity. Unlike the standard Eaton-Kortum model, product
specific-productivity is linked to a country’s land and climate characteristics and trade
costs are product-specific. We derive a structural relationship between the probability a
country has comparative advantage in a given export market for an individual agricultural
product and the bilateral costs of trading that product controlling for the product-specific
unit costs of production from a general equilibrium framework. We specify the relationship
as a random coefficients logit model to estimate a country-specific distribution of
trade costs and productivity across agricultural products. We use these estimated distributions
to explore the set of bilateral relationships from which Asia-Pacific integration is
likely to generate the largest shifts in agricultural trade patterns.