RAHUL GIRI
Centro de Investigación
Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
Mexico
Office: +52-55-5628 4000
E-mail: rahul.giri@itam.mx
Web: http://ciep.itam.mx/~rahul.giri
PERSONAL
Date of Birth: 15th April 1980
Place of Birth: Delhi, India
Nationality: Indian
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Assistant Professor - Centro de Investigación (CIE), Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM),
Mexico, Aug 2008 – Present.
Business Analyst – Risk, Information & Banking (RIB), American Express India Pvt. Ltd, May 2002 – Jul 2003.
EDUCATION
Ph.D. Economics, University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, USA, August 2008.
M.A. Economics, USC, Los Angeles, USA, 2005.
M.A. Economics, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 2002.
B.A. with Honors - Economics, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, Delhi, India, 2000.
FIELDS OF INTEREST
International Economics and Macroeconomics.
DISSERTATION
Title: Explaining the Cross-Sectional Distribution of Law of One Price Deviations.
Committee: Caroline Betts, Vincenzo Quadrini, Doug Joines, Yong Kim.
PAPERS
Local Costs of Distribution, International Trade Costs and Micro Evidence on the Law of One Price (Revise and
Resubmit, Journal of International Economics).
Trade Reform and Structural Transformation (Working Paper - Joint with Caroline Betts and Rubina Verma).
A Sectoral Analysis of the Eaton-Kortum Model: Evidence from Europe (Working Paper – Joint with Kei-Mu Yi
and Hakan Yilmazkuday).
Wage Inequality and Structural Change: Evidence from the U.S. (Working Paper).
Av. Camino Santa Teresa # 930, Col. Héroes de Padierna, Del. Magdalena Contreras, C.P. , 10700 México, D.F.
Page 1 of 3
TEACHING
International Trade Theory (Undergraduate), ITAM, Mexico - Fall 2008, Spring 2009, Fall 2009, Spring 2010,
Fall 2010.
Applied Macroeconomics (Masters), ITAM, Mexico - Fall 2009, Fall 2010.
CONFERENCES & SEMINARS
XX Coloquio Mexicano de Economia Matematica y Econometria, Guanajuato, Mexico, September 2010.
Banco de Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico, November 2009.
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE), November 2009.
Society for Economic Dynamics, Istanbul, Turkey, July 2009.
Midwest Macro Meetings, Philadelphia, USA, May 2008.
Dynamics Seminar, USC, Los Angeles, USA, September 2007.
XII Workshop on Dynamic Macroeconomics, Vigo, Spain, June 2007.
LANGUAGES
Hindi - native
English – fluent
Spanish – beginner
HONORS
Fellowship, Department of Economics, USC, 2005 - 2006 and 2007 - 2008.
Graduate Assistantship, Department of Economics, USC, 2003 - 2005 and 2006 - 2007.
Merit Scholarship, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, 2000 - 2002.
Sanwa Bank Scholarship, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, 1998-1999.
REFERENCES
Available upon request.
Av. Camino Santa Teresa # 930, Col. Héroes de Padierna, Del. Magdalena Contreras, C.P. , 10700 México, D.F.
Page 2 of 3
ABSTRACTS
Local Costs of Distribution, International Trade Costs and Micro Evidence on the Law of One Price Using retail price survey data, I investigate whether international goods' market segmentation implied by
dispersion in goods' prices is consistent with market segmentation implied by observed trade flows. A Ricardian
trade model, ala Eaton-Kortum, augmented with a distribution sector can match the average price dispersion for
the basket of goods fully, and account for up to half of the variation in price dispersion across goods. The
elasticity of substitution is key to matching the data. Matching the average price dispersion in the data, sans a
distribution sector, yields a value of elasticity that is at the lower end of the range of values estimated by Eaton
and Kortum (2002). The value that matches the across good variation in price dispersion is even smaller. The
smaller values of elasticity imply larger gains from trade.
Trade Reform and Structural Transformation - We investigate the relationship between trade liberalization
and structural transformation for a sample of countries that underwent a process of significant trade liberalization.
We find that trade liberalization is associated with substantial de-agriculturalization, growth in the employment,
value added, and trade and export shares of industry and services, and in most cases with a significant increase in
the rate of economic growth as measured by increases in the growth rate of GDP per capita. We develop a twocountry, three sector general equilibrium model to assess whether the patterns of structural transformation
observed in the data can be accounted for by trade liberalization. Specifically, we carefully calibrate the model to
data and ask: would the observed patterns of structural transformation have occurred in the absence of the
reduction in trade costs implied by the growth of trade post-liberalization?
A Sectoral Analysis of the Eaton-Kortum Model: Evidence from Europe - This paper extends the EatonKortum model by considering multiple sectors, each producing a continuum of goods. The key parameters of the
model – sectoral trade elasticties and sectoral bilateral trade costs – are estimated by using disaggregated trade
data and micro data on retail prices of a large number of goods. We attempt to find how the information
contained in the retail prices of a large cross-section of goods affects (i) estimates of trade elasticities, (ii) trade
costs, and hence (iii) the empirical predictions of the model.
Wage Inequality and Structural Change: Evidence from the U.S. - There has been a dramatic increase in the
wage of college graduates (skilled labor) relative to the wage of high school graduates (unskilled labor) in the
U.S. after 1980, especially during the period 1980-1990. At the same time, the quantity of skilled labor relative to
that of unskilled labor has also increased. The data also reveals that in the post-war U.S. economy there has been
a shift of resources (labor and capital) from the industrial sector to the service sector. Using individual level data
from Current Population Survey (CPS) and disaggregated industry level data from Bureau of Economic Analysis
(BEA), this paper investigates the link between the rise of service sector and the rise in wage inequality.
Evidence shows that the reallocation of capital from industry to service sector played an important role in
determining the growth and direction of change of wage inequality. The objective of the paper is to develop a
three factor, two sector general equilibrium model to generate the structural change observed in the U.S.
economy along with the rising wage inequality. I ask the following question – what would be the growth in skill
premium in the absence of reallocation of capital?
Av. Camino Santa Teresa # 930, Col. Héroes de Padierna, Del. Magdalena Contreras, C.P. , 10700 México, D.F.
Page 3 of 3