# Keith Head
**Keith Head** (Charles Keith Head) is a Canadian-based economist who holds the HSBC Professorship in Asian Commerce at the [University of British Columbia](https://www.edgepedia.org/university-of-british-columbia)'s Sauder School of Business, where he is a Professor in the Strategy and Business Economics Division.[1](https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/people/keith-head) His research areas are international trade, multinational enterprises, economic geography, and industrial organization, and he is best known for work on the [gravity model of trade](https://www.edgepedia.org/gravity-model-of-trade) and on the firm-level determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI).[1](https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/people/keith-head) • [2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) In RePEc's all-time ranking of economists he stands at number 376 worldwide, with an average rank score of 426.73 computed as a harmonic mean across criteria that include citation measures.[3](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Position | HSBC Professor in Asian Commerce; Professor, Strategy and Business Economics Division, UBC Sauder[1](https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/people/keith-head) |
| Education | B.A. with High Honors, Swarthmore College (1986); Ph.D., MIT (1991), thesis "Learning-by-Doing and Infant Industries" supervised by Paul Krugman[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) |
| Signature work | "Gravity Equations: Workhorse, Toolkit, Cookbook" with Thierry Mayer, *Handbook of International Economics* Vol. 4 (2014), pp. 131–195[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) |
| FDI contribution | Head and Ries (2008) derived a gravity equation for FDI as acquisitions, published in *Journal of International Economics* 74(1), 2–20[5](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926133) |
| Editorship | Co-editor, *Journal of International Economics*, July 2014 – June 2017; Associate Editor, *Journal of the European Economic Association*, 2024–[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) |
| Recent output | "The Laffer Curve for Rules of Origin" (*JIE*, July 2024); "Global giants and local stars" (*AEJ: Microeconomics*, February 2025)[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) |
## Career and education
Head earned a B.A. with High Honors in [Economics](https://www.edgepedia.org/economics) at [Swarthmore College](https://www.edgepedia.org/swarthmore-college) in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT in 1991; his thesis, "Learning-by-Doing and Infant Industries," was supervised by [Paul Krugman](https://www.edgepedia.org/paul-krugman).[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) • [7](https://cepr.org/about/people/keith-head)
His academic career has been spent entirely at the University of British Columbia: Assistant Professor from 1991 to 1998, Associate Professor from 1998 to 2003, and Professor from 2003 onward, in what is now the Sauder School of Business.[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) He received the Killam Research Prize in 2008 and the Sauder Research Excellence Prize (senior category) in 2013.[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf)
**Editorial and supervisory roles.** He served as Co-editor of the *Journal of International Economics* from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017, and became an Associate Editor of the *Journal of the European Economic Association* in 2024.[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) UBC's Graduate School lists him as a doctoral supervisor in Strategy and Business Economics, with completed dissertations ranging from "Vertical supply chains and international business" (2009) to "Essays on intellectual property and innovation" (2025); a 2025 dissertation under his supervision found that only 40% of US imports from China originate from Chinese-owned firms located in China, the rest coming from multinational enterprises operating there.[8](https://grad.ubc.ca/researcher/15212-head)
## Major research contributions
**The gravity chapter.** Head's most influential single work is "Gravity Equations: Workhorse, Toolkit, Cookbook," written with [Thierry Mayer](https://www.edgepedia.org/thierry-mayer) for the *Handbook of International Economics* (Vol. 4, 2014).[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) The chapter noted that gravity equations, which relate bilateral trade flows to economic size and distance, had been used as a workhorse for analyzing the determinants of bilateral trade since their introduction by [Jan Tinbergen](https://www.edgepedia.org/jan-tinbergen) in 1962.[9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf) The chapter's central methodological argument is that naive estimation of gravity equations leads to biased and frequently misinterpreted results, and it advocates a "toolkit" of theory-consistent estimators used in concert rather than any single regression recipe.[9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf) It traces three pivotal phases of the gravity literature: 1995, when Trefler's "missing trade" and McCallum's border effects exposed the puzzle of home bias; 2002–2004, when multilateral resistance entered through Eaton and Kortum (2002) and Anderson and van Wincoop (2003); and 2008, when gravity converged with the heterogeneous-firms literature of Chaney, Helpman, and co-authors, and Melitz and Ottaviano.[9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf) The chapter also records that gravity estimates can now be combined with trade policy experiments to calculate implied welfare changes, turning a descriptive regression into a counterfactual tool.[9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf) A companion website distributes the code and data.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications)
**FDI as acquisitions.** With John Ries, Head built a parallel gravity framework for foreign direct investment. Their model treats FDI as the outcome of a market for corporate control, in which headquarters bid to control overseas assets; the derived equation for bilateral FDI stocks resembles the fixed-effects approach to bilateral trade, and the paper appeared in the *Journal of International Economics* 74(1), 2–20 (January 2008).[5](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926133) The handbook chapter notes that this discrete-choice construction, resembling Eaton and Kortum (2002), fits FDI stock data well.[9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf)
**Firm-level and location work.** Head's empirical record on multinationals began early: "Agglomeration benefits and location choice: Evidence from Japanese manufacturing investments in the United States" (with Ries and Deborah Swenson, *Journal of International Economics* 38, 1995, pp. 223–247) is among his most-cited papers.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) • [10](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Stw75CsAAAAJ) Related work with Ries on Japanese manufacturers examined the FDI-versus-export decision (2003) and offshore production and skill upgrading (*JIE*, 2002).[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) A 1996 paper with Ries estimated that China's incentive zones increased foreign investment by 30%, comprising a static increase of 13% and an additional 17% gain through agglomeration.[11](https://urbaneconomics.org/workshops/summerschool2026/slides/Mayer_UEASS2026.pdf) Other widely cited papers include "The puzzling persistence of the distance effect on bilateral trade" with Anne-Célia Disdier (*Review of Economics and Statistics*, 2008), which showed that the distance effect on trade had not declined as globalization narratives suggested, and "The erosion of colonial trade linkages after independence" (*JIE*, 2010), which introduced the "method of Tetrads" for estimating bilateral trade equations, a technique other researchers have since adopted.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) He also authored the textbook *Elements of Multinational Strategy* (Springer, 2007).[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications)
The collaboration pairs Head's firm-level FDI agenda, built largely with Ries on Japanese and corporate-control data, with Mayer's spatial and economic-geography emphasis; the gravity chapter and the counterfactual-methods work sit at the intersection.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) • [9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf)
## By the numbers
RePEc's all-time aggregate ranking places Head at 376 among economists, with an average rank score of 426.73; the score is a harmonic mean of his ranks across multiple criteria, including citation-based measures, so a weak criterion pulls the aggregate down sharply.[3](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html) On the h-index criterion specifically, RePEc ranks him 186 with an h-index of 45 as of August 2026, counting citations extracted by the CitEc project from works cataloged in RePEc, where both the cited and citing works must be listed.[6](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.hindex.html) An aggregated bibliometric profile reports 123 works and 16,060 citations with an h-index of 42, and attributes 2,325 citations to the gravity handbook chapter, 1,134 to the 1995 agglomeration paper, and 1,096 to the colonial-trade-linkages paper; this profile is a weaker source than RePEc, and the two h-index figures differ because the underlying citation databases differ.[6](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.hindex.html)
## Influence on trade policy and practice
Several of Head's papers address policy questions directly. "How remote is the offshoring threat?" (with Mayer and Ries, *European Economic Review*) examined the political concern over jobs moving abroad; "Do trade missions increase trade?" (*Canadian Journal of Economics*, 2010) evaluated a government promotion tool; and "Regionalism within Multilateralism: The WTO Trade Policy Review of Canada" (with Ries, *The World Economy*, 2004) engaged the WTO's review process for regional trade agreements.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) His gravity-based welfare framework underlies policy counterfactual analysis, and "The United States of Europe: A Gravity Model Evaluation of the Four Freedoms" (*Journal of Economic Perspectives*, 2021) applied it to European integration.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) • [9](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf)
He remains active in current debates through VoxEU columns: "No, the EU does not impose a 45% tariff on itself" (with Mayer, November 13, 2025) and "An alliance for open trade: How to counter Trump's tariffs" (July 27, 2025).[7](https://cepr.org/about/people/keith-head)
## Recent developments
Head's output has continued at a steady pace. "Poor Substitutes? Counterfactual methods in IO and Trade compared" (with Mayer) appeared in the *Review of Economics and Statistics* in September 2023.[2](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications) "The Laffer Curve for Rules of Origin," with Mayer and Marc Melitz, appeared in the *Journal of International Economics* 150 in July 2024, and "Global giants and local stars: How changes in brand ownership affect competition," with Vanessa Alviarez and Mayer, appeared in *American Economic Journal: Microeconomics* 17(1), pp. 389–434, in February 2025.[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf) He also contributed a Springer encyclopedia chapter, "Paul Krugman (1953–)," in 2025.[12](https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-031-77623-6_32.html)
**Current projects.** CEPR lists his discussion paper DP21184, "Industrial policies for multi-stage production: The battle for battery-powered vehicles" (February 15, 2026), with Mayer and Melitz.[7](https://cepr.org/about/people/keith-head) Lecture slides for a 2026 Urban Economics Association summer school present the associated model of multi-stage production location, calibrated to 2022 S&P data covering cell and assembly locations for all electric-vehicle models since 2015; the counterfactual results indicate that a clean, unconditional subsidy would have done more to promote EV adoption than subsidies restricted to particular production locations.[11](https://urbaneconomics.org/workshops/summerschool2026/slides/Mayer_UEASS2026.pdf) His 2024 appointment as Associate Editor of the *Journal of the European Economic Association* continues his editorial activity.[4](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf)
## References
1. [Keith Head, UBC Sauder School of Business faculty page](https://www.sauder.ubc.ca/people/keith-head)
2. [Publications, Keith Head, UBC](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/publications)
3. [Top Economists, IDEAS/RePEc (May 2026)](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html)
4. [Curriculum Vitae, Charles Keith Head (February 18, 2025)](https://blogs.ubc.ca/khead/files/2025/10/cv_head_3p.pdf)
5. [FDI as an Outcome of the Market for Corporate Control: Theory and Evidence (Head & Ries), SSRN](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=926133)
6. [Top Economists by h-index, IDEAS/RePEc (August 2026)](https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.hindex.html)
7. [Keith Head, CEPR people profile](https://cepr.org/about/people/keith-head)
8. [Keith Head, UBC Graduate School supervisor profile](https://grad.ubc.ca/researcher/15212-head)
9. [Gravity Equations: Workhorse, Toolkit, and Cookbook, CEPII Working Paper 2013-27](https://www.cepii.fr/pdf_pub/wp/2013/wp2013-27.pdf)
10. [Keith Head, Google Scholar profile](https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=Stw75CsAAAAJ)
11. [Mayer lecture slides, Urban Economics Association Summer School 2026](https://urbaneconomics.org/workshops/summerschool2026/slides/Mayer_UEASS2026.pdf)
12. [ideas.repec.org](https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-031-77623-6_32.html)
---
*Topic: Encyclopedia › Society and history › Social and behavioral scientists › Macroeconomists and monetary economists › International trade economists*
*Initially written Oct 10, 2026 · Edited: Oct 11, 2026; Oct 15, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license