Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms
Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms

Author: Andrew B. Bernard

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.

Technology and Market Structure
Technology and Market Structure

Author: John Sutton

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2001-01-26

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13: 9780262692649

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

John Sutton sets out a unified theory that encompasses two major approaches to studying market, while generating a series of novel predictions as to how markets evolve. Traditionally, the field of industrial organization has relied on two unrelated theories—the cross-section theory and the growth-of-firms theory—to explain cross-industry differences in concentration and within-industry skewness. The two approaches are based on very different mathematical structures and few researchers have attempted to relate them to each other. In this book, John Sutton unifies the two approaches through a theory that rests on three simple principles. The first two, a "survivor principle" that says that firms will not pursue loss-making strategies, and an "arbitrage principle" that says that if a profitable opportunity is available, some firm will take it, suffice to define a set of possible outcomes. The third, the "symmetry principle," says that the strategy used by a new entrant into any submarket depends neither on the entrants identity nor on its history in other submarkets. This allows researchers to bring together the roles of strategic interactions and of independence effects. The result is that the considerations motivating the cross-section tradition and those motivating the growth-of-firms tradition both drop out within a single game-theoretic model. This book follows Sutton's Sunk Costs and Market Structure, published by MIT Press in 1991.

Exporting Through Intermediaries: Impact on Export Dynamics and Welfare
Exporting Through Intermediaries: Impact on Export Dynamics and Welfare

Author: Parisa Kamali

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2019-12-27

Total Pages: 58

ISBN-13: 1513519875

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In many countries, a sizable share of international trade is carried out by intermediaries. While large firms tend to export to foreign markets directly, smaller firms typically export via intermediaries (indirect exporting). I document a set of facts that characterize the dynamic nature of indirect exporting using firm-level data from Vietnam and develop a dynamic trade model with both direct and indirect exporting modes and customer accumulation. The model is calibrated to match the dynamic moments of the data. The calibration yields fixed costs of indirect exporting that are less than a third of those of direct exporting, the variable costs of indirect exporting are twice higher, and demand for the indirectly exported products grows more slowly. Decomposing the gains from indirect and direct exporting, I find that 18 percent of the gains from trade in Vietnam are generated by indirect exporters. Finally, I demonstrate that a dynamic model that excludes the indirect exporting channel will overstate the welfare gains associated with trade liberalization by a factor of two.

Trade Liberalization
Trade Liberalization

Author: Romain Wacziarg

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781788111492

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This compelling two-volume collection presents the major literary contributions to the economic analysis of the consequences of trade liberalization on growth, productivity, labor market outcomes and economic inequality. Examining the classical theories that stress gains from trade stemming from comparative advantage, the selection also comprises more recent theories of imperfect competition, where any potential gains from trade can stem from competitive effects or the international transmission of knowledge. Empirical contributions provide evidence regarding the explanatory power of these various theories, including work on the effects of trade openness on economic growth, wages, and income inequality, as well as evidence on the effects of trade on firm productivity, entry and exit. Prefaced by an original introduction from the editor, the collection will to be an invaluable research resource for academics, practitioners and those drawn to this fascinating topic.

The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy
The Organization of Firms in a Global Economy

Author: Dalia Marin

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0674038541

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Presents a new research program that is transforming the study of international trade. Until a few years ago, models of international trade did not recognize the heterogeneity of firms and exporters, and could not provide good explanations of international production networks. Now such models exist and are explored in this volume.

The Intensive Margin in Trade
The Intensive Margin in Trade

Author: Ana Fernandes

Publisher: International Monetary Fund

Published: 2018-12-07

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 1484386175

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Melitz model highlights the importance of the extensive margin (the number of firms exporting) for trade flows. Using the World Bank’s Exporter Dynamics Database (EDD) featuring firm-level exports from 50 countries, we find that around 50 percent of variation in exports is along the extensive margin—a quantitative victory for the Melitz framework. The remaining 50 percent on the intensive margin (exports per exporting firm) contradicts a special case of Melitz with Pareto-distributed firm productivity, which has become a tractable benchmark. This benchmark model predicts that, conditional on the fixed costs of exporting, all variation in exports across trading partners should occur on the extensive margin. We find that moving from a Pareto to a lognormal distribution allows the Melitz model to match the role of the intensive margin in the EDD. We use likelihood methods and the EDD to estimate a generalized Melitz model with a joint lognormal distribution for firm-level productivity, fixed costs and demand shifters, and use “exact hat algebra” to quantify the effects of a decline in trade costs on trade flows and welfare in the estimated model. The welfare effects turn out to be quite close to those in the standard Melitz-Pareto model when we choose the Pareto shape parameter to fit the average trade elasticity implied by our estimated Melitz-lognormal model, although there are significant differences regarding the effects on trade flows.

Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean
Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean

Author: Inter-American Development Bank

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-07-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1349581518

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.

Handbook of International Economics
Handbook of International Economics

Author: R.W. Jones

Publisher: North Holland

Published: 1984

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Textbook, research papers on international economic theory, economic policy and practice - includes a literature survey of theoretical studies in trade relations; covers evolution of economic models explaining the determinants of trade structure, capital flow, labour mobility, trade in natural resources, etc.; examines macroeconomics aspects of balance of payments, exchange rate, international monetary system, economic relations and dependence, etc. Bibliography, graphs, statistical tables.

Heckscher-Ohlin Trade Theory
Heckscher-Ohlin Trade Theory

Author: Eli Filip Heckscher

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book presents the corrected and first complete translation from Swedish of Heckscher's 1919 article on foreign trade as well as a translation from Swedish of Ohlin's 1924 Ph.D. dissertation, the main source of the now famous Heckscher-Ohlin theorem.