企業家與貿易福利增益

Entrepreneurship and Welfare Gains from Trade

本文研究異質性企業家在獨佔型競爭與固定替代彈性的架構下，對於貿易福利增益的影響與意涵。假設廠商的生產力取決於企業家的企業管理能力，則模型中的行為人便依據自己企業管理能力的高下，來選擇所從事的職業：企業家或工人。研究結果顯示，在總體貿易福利增益幅度上，本模型雖然與Melitz的異質性廠商模型得到相同的結果。但因本研究異質性行為人的模型設定，讓我們可以分別檢視異質性行為人間，個別貿易福利增益的不均程度。企業家總是比勞工享受到較高的貿易福利增益幅度。兩者的差我們稱之為企業家在貿易福利增益上的溢價，也作為貿易福利增益在兩種職業之間分配不均的指標。我們也證明了全球化程度越高，以及行為人能力分佈越異質，將使此一貿易福利增幅差異越大。

This paper investigates the implications of heterogeneous entrepreneurs for the welfare gains from trade in a monopolistic competition model with a demand system of constant elasticity of substitution (CES). An agent selects her occupation between entrepreneur and worker according to her level of entrepreneurial capability, which determines the productivity of her launched firm. Although this model is isomorphic to Melitz’s heterogeneous firm model in terms of the aggregate welfare gains from trade, it enables us to see the inequality in welfare gains from trade among heterogeneous agents. We find that firm owners always benefit more than workers due to an entrepreneurship premium, which is also a measure to quantify the disparity in welfare gains from trade between entrepreneurs and workers within a country. We also prove that globalization and agent heterogeneity make this disparity more severe.