International Consumption Patterns among High-Income Countries: Evidence from the OECD Data

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of economic integration on the product-level consumption patterns across the OECD in the past decade. Estimation results find evidence of strong convergence in cross-country consumption patterns with substantial heterogeneity across products and countries. The results are robust to either the benchmark choice, data selection, or the choice of model specification. In addition to documenting convergence, the paper relates the volume of international trade to cross-country consumption patterns.