substantial taste heterogeneity in food exports across destination countries. Overall, in the large majority of food exports …This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from … 1998-2005 to generate a "taste distance" measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate …

revenue ranges between 1-31% depending on the product category in the food industry. Overall, the demand shifters, taste and … product quality explain twice as much of the variation in export revenues than cost. …

contribution of the number of firm-products, their average attributes (quality and efficiency) and heterogeneity around the mean … variation in sales, while the remaining part is equally accounted for by average attributes and their dispersion. Quality is the … distribution of firms’ sales, especially due to heterogeneity in quality. These countries also tend to be more likely to host …

bilateral distance, tariffs, and the quality of their exports. Under the assumption that trade costs are both ad valorem and per … smaller in magnitude for higher quality exports. We find strong support for the predictions of the model using a unique data … set of Argentinean firm-level wine exports combined with experts wine ratings as a measure of quality. …

This paper provides a direct test of how fixed export costs and productivity jointly determine firm-level export …, while those with higher productivity export more. These outcomes are the foundation of the widely-used sorting mechanism in … the trade models with firm heterogeneity. A particular and novel finding is that high-productivity nonexporters face …

Why is it that exporter productivity premia (EPP) differ so widely in size? We take this question to the theory and to … EPPs across sectors, and hence across countries, can be explained by the variation in productivity dispersion, trade costs …

productive enough to overcome the entry costs of foreign markets. Once firms pass this productivity threshold, they all export … services and manufacturing for 2010-2014. Our findings are threefold. First, high productivity is an important, but not a … sufficient condition for exporting. Firm size (substitute for productivity), import status, and foreign ownership are also …

Starting from the premise that productivity is heterogeneous across firms, Melitz (2003) explains why individual … productivity is key in determining the capability of a firm to export. In this paper we build a model along Melitz's lines to show … international markets. We show that firms with low productivity may still be able to penetrate foreign markets provided they have …

in a model of network formation with suppliers of heterogeneous productivity and matchability, buyers of heterogeneous … productivity, and intermediaries that reduce matching costs for a brokerage fee. Empirical evidence on trade activity across firms …