Testing the small‐country assumption: Thailand's rice exports

Abstract The familiar ‘small‐country’ assumption is tested empirically in this paper, focusing upon the long‐run international demand for Thailand's rice exports and drawing upon recent developments in the statistical analysis of economic time series. A relatively robust long‐run price elasticity of export demand is obtained, at just under 2. The literature on the export demand for manufactured goods has shown the central importance of the ‘normalization’ used during estimation. Our results suggest that this issue may not be as important in the case of primary commodity exports, at least not where the exporting country possesses a degree of monopoly power.