Welfare and Trade Without Pareto

This paper investigates the consequences of replacing the assumption of Pareto heterogeneity with log-normal heterogeneity. This case is interesting because it (a) maintains some desirable analytic features of Pareto, (b) ts the complete distribution of rm sales rather than just approximating the right tail, and (c) can be generated under equally plausible processes (see online appendix). The log-normal is reasonably tractable but its use sacrices some \scale-free" properties conveyed by the Pareto distribution. Aspects of the the calibration that do not matter under Pareto lead to important dierences in the gains from trade under log-normal.

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Source https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-00973032
Author Head, Keith, Mayer, Thierry, Thoenig, Mathias
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 5, 2026, 16:57 (UTC)
Created May 5, 2026, 16:57 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00973032
Language en
Rights https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/
contributor Sauder School of Business [British Columbia] (Sauder) ; University of British Columbia [Canada] (UBC)
creator Head, Keith
date 2014-01-05T00:00:00
harvest_object_id a837a36b-61c6-4e0e-b7af-eb568aff1bcd
harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2026-02-12T00:00:00
relation info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/hdl/2441/f6h8764enu2lskk9p2m9j4i07
set_spec type:UNDEFINED