International differences in production techniques: Implications for the factor content of trade

This paper examines how production techniques differ across countries, factors, and industries and considers its implications for previous empirical evidence on the Vanek prediction. I find that production techniques differ substantially across countries and factors, but differ much less across industries within a country. Davis and Weinstein (2001) argue that modeling cross-industry differences (multiple-cone specialization) improves the fit of the Vanek prediction: however, their test statistics are unchanged when one restricts techniques to be identical across industries within a country. Thus, the bulk of world factor content of trade does not arise from specialization. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.