Origins of Terms of Trade
Alan V. Deardorff is John W. Sweetland Professor of International Economics and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He received his doctorate in economics from Cornell University in 1971 and has been on the faculty at the University of Michigan since 1970. He served as chair of the Department of Economics from 1991 to 1995. From 2007 to 2015 he was associate dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
Deardorff has served as a consultant to many government agencies, including the Departments of State, Treasury, and Labor of the United States Government and international institutions including OECD, UNCTAD, and the World Bank. He is currently on the editorial boards of several journals. He is co-author, with Robert M. Stern, of The Michigan Model of World Production and Trade and Computational Analysis of Global Trading Arrangements. He has published numerous articles on various aspects of international trade theory and policy.
His work on international trade theory has dealt primarily with the theory of comparative advantage and the Heckscher-Ohlin and other models that explain the patterns and effects of international trade. His work on trade policy has included analyses of anti-dumping laws, the safeguards clause of the GATT, and arguments for and against extending intellectual property protection to developing countries.
In his work with Stern, he developed a computable general equilibrium model of production, trade, and employment in 34 major countries of the world. They used this model for a variety of purposes, including analysis of the Tokyo and Uruguay Rounds of multilateral trade negotiations and possible outcomes of the Doha Round. He, Stern, and Drusilla K. Brown also developed a series of four- and eight-country models that they used to evaluate the sectoral employment implications of various regional trading arrangements.
Deardorff’s current research interests include: the roles of trade costs and intermediate inputs in international trade; potential implications of rules of origin in proliferating free trade agreements as well as the implications of exempting sensitive sectors from these agreements; and potential implications of large trade agreements currently being negotiated by the U.S. with Europe and with countries of the Asia-Pacific.