". Productivity is modeled as is standard in the literature. Caliber is the ability to produce quality using few fixed inputs. While … to single-attribute models of firm heterogeneity emphasizing either productivity or the ability to produce quality, our …We develop a model of international trade with two sources of firm heterogeneity: "productivity" and "caliber …

countries; and their productivity levels are above those of non-exporters, but below those of firms having both domestic sales …

increase productivity, and thereby exports, through better complementarity of inputs, transfer of technology and/or decreased … on firms' productivity, the link between imported intermediate inputs and export scope has not been made. This paper … bridges the gap by studying the impact of imported inputs on the margins of exports. We use a unique firms' level database of …

. Higher costs of employment decrease operating profits and lead to a higher productivity threshold level required for entering …

different possible equilibria. Depending on how costly trade is relative to innovation, medium-productivity firms may either … export without innovating, innovate without exporting, do both or do neither. The impact of trade on aggregate productivity …, aggregate productivity need not always increase. After calibrating the model to five European countries, we show that the …

in the import tariff induces an incumbent importer/exporter to increase the quality of its exports and to raise its …'s producers to upgrade the quality of the goods that they export. The paper first documents two stylized facts regarding the …'s (2003) model of trade with heterogeneous firms by introducing endogenous quality choice. The model predicts that a reduction …

Policies to stimulate export growth and diversify the composition of exports in South Africa are now high on the …

minimum wages and productivity on firms' exports. It shows that the influence of minimum wages on firms' exporting probability … and foreign sales is negative while that of firms' productivity on their exports is positive. Econometric analysis based … 2007 verifies these predictions. Holding the other variables constant, if minimum wages and their productivity increase by …

strong support for the self-selection hypothesis, according to which firms need higher productivity performance to compensate … productivity levels for exporters. The paper also tests for the reverse causality (learning-by-exporting), but finds no empirical … support for it, not even after controlling for the firm's distance to a constructed international productivity frontier. This …

-city areas. Standard empirical tests of the new trade models consistently find productivity-based ex ante self selection by … also goes along with positive productivity sorting. Ignoring this leads to upwardly biased estimates of the effect of … hypothesis. I find evidence that positive productivity self-selection is based on the combined effects of agglomeration and …