About

Sergey Nigai, PhD, from ETH Zurich, is an associate professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research interests include international trade and consumer welfare, with a focus on the heterogeneous effects of globalization on consumers, workers, and firms. He is also a research affiliate at CESifo Munich. Nigai's academic background includes a PhD from ETH Zurich, an MA from the University of Virginia, and a BA from the National University of Uzbekistan. His work centers on understanding how globalization impacts different economic agents, emphasizing applied microeconomics and international trade.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• International economics
• Business
• Transport engineering
• Econometrics
• International trade
• Operations research
• Geography
• Law
• Engineering
• Market economy
• Microeconomics
• Macroeconomics

Selected publications

• International Transmission of Inequality through Trade

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2025-07-30

  article1st authorCorresponding

  I examine the international transmission of income inequality through trade. Using firm-level and aggregate data, I find that exporting to more unequal countries increases domestic inequality. I rationalize this finding by developing a model of international consumer targeting in which firms serve specific consumer segments in each market. Inequality in export markets shapes the distribution of firms’ profits and, therefore, the incomes of individuals linked to them, widening domestic inequality. The calibrated model suggests that international inequality transmission explains 4.4 percent and 4.8 percent of the observed levels of Gini coefficients and income shares of the top 1 percent, respectively. (JEL D22, D31, D63, F14, F63)

  PublisherDOI

• Trade and Inequality: A Sufficient-Statistics Approach

  Journal of Political Economy Macroeconomics · 2024-05-21 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We develop a sufficient-statistics approach for calculating the effects of international trade on within-country income inequality. In a class of models in which changes in within-sector inequality are only generated via linear profit sharing between individuals and firms, observing changes in two statistics—bilateral trade flows and the share of exporters—is sufficient for measuring trade-induced changes in inequality. This holds in the models with heterogeneous firms and monopolistic competition of Arkolakis, Costinot, and Rodriguez-Clare, which our approach complements, requiring minimal additional data and allowing one to calculate the effects of trade on various inequality measures.

  PublisherDOI

• HIGHWAYS AND GLOBALIZATION

  International Economic Review · 2023 · 26 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Economics
  • International trade

  Abstract This article quantifies the value of U.S. highways. We develop a multisector general equilibrium model with many locations in the United States (i.e., counties) and many countries. In the model, producers choose shipping routes subject to domestic and international trade costs, endogenous congestion, and port efficiency at international transshipment points. Applying the model, we find that removing the Interstate Highway System reduces real GDP by $421–$578 billion. The results highlight the gains from intersectoral and international trade as well as the role of domestic transportation infrastructure in shaping regional comparative advantage.

  PublisherDOI

• Selection effects, inequality, and aggregate gains from trade

  Journal of International Economics · 2023 · 8 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • International economics
  • Econometrics
  PublisherDOI

• Integrated versus segmented markets: Implications for export pricing and welfare

  Review of International Economics · 2023-01-27

  articleCorresponding

  Abstract This paper challenges the common assumption of perfect market segmentation in models based on monopolistic competition. We develop a tractable approach to analyze export entry and pricing decisions of firms and show that the trade costs triangle condition (absence of potential re‐exporting arbitrage) imposes constraints on firm‐level export prices, which have first‐order implications for trade and welfare. We provide empirical evidence that the triangle condition is violated in the data and quantify the importance of these violations in a general equilibrium setting.

  PublisherDOI

• Integrated Versus Segmented Markets: Implications for Export Pricing and Welfare

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Empirical Productivity Distributions and International Trade

  RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · 2020-08-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We use firm-level data for 15 countries and 13 manufacturing sectors to estimate firm-level productivity parameters and to establish representative country-sector-specific empirical productivity distributions. We use these distributions against the backdrop of multi-sector versions of the models of Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Melitz (2003) to quantify the role of technology in shaping international trade flows. We find that, on average, absolute advantage measured as productivity differences across countries within sectors explains 15% and 21% of the total variation in bilateral trade shares in the models of Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Melitz (2003), respectively. In contrast, on average, comparative advantage measured as productivity differences across sectors within countries explains 39% and 47% of the variation in trade flows in these two models. We also demonstrate that empirical productivity distributions entail quantitatively important micro-to-macro implications for marginal responses of trade flows to changes in trade costs, for gravity-type estimation of trade models, and for comparative statics isomorphism between the customarily parameterized models of international trade. We confirm the predictions of the two aforementioned models under empirical productivity distributions in the data.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Highways and Globalization

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 6 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• Gravity Models and the Law of Large Numbers

  Economics Letters · 2020-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Highways and Globalization

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-10-01 · 4 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  This paper quantifies the value of US highways. We develop a multisector general equilibrium model with many locations in the United States (i.e., counties) and many countries. In the model, producers choose shipping routes subject to domestic and international trade costs, endogenous congestion, and port efficiency at international transshipment points. Applying the model, we find that removing the Interstate Highway System reduces real GDP by $421-$578 billion. The results highlight the gains from intersectoral and international trade as well as the role of domestic transportation infrastructure in shaping regional comparative advantage.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Peter Egger

  56 shared

• Nora Strecker

  University College Dublin

  13 shared

• Colin Jareb

  Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

  4 shared

• Dongkyu Yang

  University of Colorado System

  4 shared

• Katharina Erhardt

  4 shared

• Taylor Jaworski

  3 shared

• Carl Kitchens

  3 shared

• Raphael Becker

  University of Duisburg-Essen

  3 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  ETH Zurich

• M.A.

  University of Virginia

• B.A.

  National University of Uzbekistan