Robert Christopher Feenstra

Education

• Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1981
• B.A., Economics, University of British Columbia, 1977

About

Robert C. Feenstra holds the C. Bryan Cameron Distinguished Chair in International Economics at the University of California, Davis. He is director of the Center for International Data, an organization within the Department of Economics at UC Davis that collects, enhances, creates and disseminates international economic data. From 1992 to 2016 he also directed the International Trade and Investment program at the National Bureau of Economic Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Feenstra has published over 100 articles in international trade, as well as 15 books. Those books include Offshoring in the Global Economy, and Product Variety and the Gains from Trade (MIT Press, 2010), the graduate textbook Advanced International Trade: Theory and Evidence (Princeton University Press, 2nd ed., 2015), and an undergraduate textbook jointly with Alan M. Taylor, International Economics (Worth Publishers, 4th ed., 2017). His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the Sloan Foundation. Feenstra delivered the Zeuthen Lectures at the University of Copenhagen in 2007, the Ohlin Lectures at the Stockholm School of Economics in 2008, the Yanfu Memorial Lecture at Peking University in 2011, and the Frank D. Graham Memorial Lecture at Princeton University in 2014.

Research Focus

Professor Feenstra’s research focuses on international economics and applied microeconomics.

Publications

• Feenstra, R., B. Mandel, M. B. Reinsdorf, and M. J. Slaughter. “Effects of Terms of Trade Gains and Tariff Changes on the Measurement of U.S. Productivity Growth.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 5.1 (February 2013): 59–93.
• Feenstra, R., H. Ma, J. P. Neary, and D. S. P. Rao. “Who Shrunk China? Puzzles in the Measurement of Real GDP.” Economic Journal 123.573 (December 2013): 1100–1129.
• Feenstra, R., Z. Li, and M. Yu. “Exports and Credit Constraints Under Incomplete Information: Theory and Evidence from China.” Review of Economics and Statistics 96.4 (2014): 729–744.
• Feenstra, R., and J. Romalis. “International Prices and Endogenous Quality.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 129.2 (lead article, May 2014): 477–528.
• Feenstra, R., R. Inklaar and M. Timmer, “The Next Generation of the Penn World Table,” American Economic Review, October 2015, 105(10): 3150-3182.
• Feenstra, R. and D. Weinstein, “Globalization, Markups, and U.S. Welfare,” Journal of Political Economy, August 2017, 125(4): 1041-1074.

• Feenstra, R., P. Luck, M. Obstfeld and K. Russ, “In Search of the Armington Elasticity,” Review of Economics and Statistics, March 2018, 100(1): 135-150.

Teaching

Robert Feenstra teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the area of international trade

Awards

Dr. Feenstra has won numerous awards throughout his career, including the Bernhard Harms Prize from the Kiel Institute for World Economics at the University of Kiel in 2006. He was awarded the Herbert A. Young Society Dean’s Fellowship at UC Davis from 2010 to 2013.