Our novel approach to modeling monopolistic competition with heterogeneous consumers involves a space of characteristics of a differentiated good (consumers' ideal points), alike Hotelling (1929). Firms have heterogeneous costs à la Melitz (2003). In addition to price setting, each firm also...

Our novel approach to modeling monopolistic competition with heterogeneous firms and consumers involves spatial product differentiation. Space can be interpreted either as a geographical space or as a space of characteristics of a differentiated good. In addition to price setting, each firm also...

Trade facilitation policy focuses on accelerated and transparent shipment processing to reduce trade costs. A common measure to evaluate processing frictions is the time it takes to import. In this paper we translate import processing times to costs. Our theory considers that shipment processing...

This paper is concerned with cross-dependencies between endogenous market structure and tax policy. We extend the Mirrlees (1971) model of income taxation with a monopolistic competition framework with general additively separable consumer preferences. We show that price and variety distortions...

We consider a model of monopolistic competition with several heterogeneous sectors and endogenous labor supply. For low (high) values of the labor supply elasticity, we show that there is always a unique equilibrium. For medium values of the labor supply elasticity, the set of equilibria (if...

We challenge the common practice of estimating gravity equations with time-interval data in order to capture dynamic-adjustment effects to trade-policy changes. Instead, we point to a series of advantages of using consecutive-year data recognizing dynamic-adjustment effects. Our analysis reveals...

In this paper, employing transaction level data for Russian imports, we explore the role of multi-product shipments in explaining shipping patterns across countries. First, we document that firms from more developed countries include on average more different products into a single shipment. We...

In this paper, we estimate the trade effects of a transit system upgrading that streamlines border processing in developing countries. Our empirical approach combines transaction level export data from El Salvador with unique data that distinguishes export flows that were processed on the...

While countries make use of a wide range of policies to attract multinational firms, identifying the effect of such policies is difficult. Combining firm-level data on both the location of these firms’ foreign affiliates and detailed service-specific information from Costa Rica’s investment...