Putting Quantitative Models to the Test: An Application to Trump’s Trade War by Dave Donaldson

Join us for the latest Applied Economics and Macroeconomics Research Seminar Series event, Summer Term 2024.

John Bates Clark medal winner Dave Donaldson, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will present this week's seminar on  Putting Quantitative Models to the Test: An Application to Trump’s Trade War.

Abstract

The primary motivation behind quantitative modeling in international trade and many other fields is to shed light on the economic consequences of policy changes. To help assess and potentially strengthen the credibility of such quantitative predictions we introduce an IV-based goodness-of-fit measure that provides the basis for testing causal predictions in arbitrary general-equilibrium environments as well as for estimating the average misspecification in these predictions. As an illustration of how to use our IV-based goodness-of-fit measure in practice, we revisit the welfare consequences of Trump’s trade war predicted by Fajgelbaum et al. (2020).

The seminar will begin with a presentation and will end with a Q and A session.

It will be held in the Economics Common Room at 2pm on Thursday 16 May. This event is open to all levels of study and is also open to the public. To register your place and gain access to the webinar, please contact the seminar organisers.

This event is part of the Applied Economics Research Seminar Series.