This paper introduces quality innovations with endogenous sunk costs in a heterogeneous firm model of international trade and derives implications for the gravity equation. The model predicts that the effect of fixed costs on exports and on the share of exporters is lower in industries with a...

Using firm and industry data, we establish two facts: (i) Uncertainty about demand conditions not only reduces export sales and exporting probabilities but also makes exports less sensitive to trade policy; (ii) the most productive exporters are more affected by higher industry-wide expenditure...

We develop a novel two-stage methodology that allows us to study the empirical determinants of the ex post effects of past free trade agreements (FTAs) as well as obtain ex ante predictions for the effects of future FTAs. We first identify 908 unique estimates of the effects of FTAs on different...

An astonishing 33% of all firm-product-destination export spells in Danish data turn out to be isolated single-month one-off export events (observed once in a 49 month window). On average, for an export-active firm, such one-off exports account for 17% of total foreign sales. These patterns...

Migration and trade are often linked through ethnic networks boosting bilateral trade. This study uses migration to quantify the importance of Ricardian technology differences for international trade. The framework provides the first panel estimates connecting country-industry productivity and...

This paper explores firms’ export dynamics in emerging economies where local firms face stiff foreign competition, both at home and abroad, and thus compelled to choose the level of quality in which to export. We develop and test a model of vertical product differentiation where the link...

For a long time globalization could be seen everywhere but in gravity estimates. We offer evidence how globalization affects manufacturing trade over the period 1986-2006 and show that, on average, the effect of distance has fallen whereas the effects of proximity and regional trade agreements...

We re-visit the evidence about the trade benefits of European Monetary Union (EMU), focusing on the experience of countries which adopted the common currency since 2002. Based on “state of the art” gravity estimations for the period 1992-2013, we reach three main conclusions. First,...

We quantify the effect of container technology on transport costs and trade by estimating the modal choice between containerization and breakbulk shipping using micro-level trade data. The model is motivated by novel facts that relate container usage to shipment, destination and firm...

We set up a model of offshoring with heterogeneous producers that captures two empirical regularities of German offshoring firms. There is selection of larger, more productive firms into offshoring. However, the selection is not sharp, and offshoring and non-offshoring firms coexist over a wide...