Empirical studies of firms within industries consistently report substantial heterogeneity in measures of performance such as size and productivity. This paper explores the consequences of joint heterogeneity on the supply side (sellers) and the demand side (buyers) in international trade using...

This paper examines the interdependence between innovation and imports of intermediates, and their joint impact on productivity. We do so by developing a quantitative model with heterogeneous firms and international trade where firms can invest in R&D and source inputs internationally....

This paper examines implications of the terms-of-trade theory for the determinants of outcomes arising under the enforcement provisions of international agreements. Like original trade agreement negotiations, we model formal trade dispute negotiations as potentially addressing the terms-of-trade...

When trade costs are of the iceberg type (Samuelson 1952) and markups are independent of trade costs, relative prices across markets are distorted, but relative prices within markets are not. When trade costs depart from the analytically convenient iceberg type, distortion will also occur within...

In this paper we ask why the gravity model of international trade also work well for foreign direct investment (FDI) flows or multinational production (MP). We propose a model of trade and horizontal FDI, where the subsidiary is allowed to source inputs from the headquarters. Under certain...

This paper introduces a new data set and establishes a set of basic facts and patterns regarding the ‘trade’ that countries fight about under WTO dispute settlement. It characterizes the scope of products, as well as the levels of and changes to the trade values, market shares, volumes, and...

Poor countries are rarely challenged in formal WTO trade disputes for failing to live up to commitments, reducing the benefits of their participation in international trade agreements. This paper examines the political-economic causes of the failure to challenge poor countries and discusses the...

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships, geography and the structure of the production network in firm performance. We develop a simple model where firms can outsource tasks and search for suppliers in different locations. Low search and outsourcing costs lead firms to...

We expect trade liberalization to give rise to aggregate productivity gains, as the least efficient firms are forced out, and labor is reallocated towards the best performing firms. But the positive intra-industry reallocation effects rely on the stark assumption that exporters’ superior...

Using a new and extensive micro data set we investigate the impact of a change in international competitive pressure following a real exchange shock on multi-product firms’ product mix. We only find weak evidence for the core competencies hypothesis, according to which, we would expect the...