This paper proposes that quality differentiation is an important feature of the operations of multi-product firms. We develop a model in which manufacturers vary product quality across their product range by using inputs of different quality levels. Firms' core competency is in varieties of...

We examine the sales of French manufacturing firms in 113 destinations, including France itself. Several regularities stand out: (1) the number of French firms selling to a market, relative to French market share, increases systematically with market size; (2) sales distributions are very similar...

We develop an assignment theory to analyze the volume and composition of foreign direct investment (FDI). Firms conduct FDI by either engaging in greenfield investment or in cross-border acquisitions. Cross-border acquisitions involve firms trading heterogeneous corporate assets to exploit...

This paper establishes six stylized facts about firms' export prices using detailed customs data on the universe of Chinese trade flows. First, across firms selling a given product, exporters that charge higher prices earn greater revenues in each destination, have bigger worldwide sales, and...

We use a panel of Brazilian exporters, their products, and destination markets to document a set of regularities for multi-product exporters: (i) few top-selling products account for the bulk of a firm's exports in a market, (ii) the distribution of exporter scope (the number of products per...

Large multi-product firms dominate international trade flows. This paper documents new facts about multi-product manufacturing exporters that are not easily reconciled with existing multi-product models. Using novel linked production and export data at the firm-product level, we find that the...

This paper studies the effects of marketing choice to firm growth. I assume that firm-level growth is the result of idiosyncratic productivity improvements with continuous arrival of new potential producers. A firm enters a market if it is profitable to incur the marginal cost to reach the first...

I develop a new theory of marketing costs and introduce it into a model of trade with product differentiation and firm productivity heterogeneity. In this model, a firm enters a market if it makes profits by reaching a single consumer there and pays an increasing marginal cost to access...

We develop a theory of multiproduct firms to analyze the effects of globalization on the distributions of firm size, scope, and productivity. Our model explains two puzzles. First, it explains the well-known size-discount puzzle: large firms have lower values of Tobin%u2019s Q than small firms....

This paper presents a tractable formalization and an empirical investigation of the quality-complementarity hypothesis, the hypothesis that input quality and plant productivity are complementary in generating output quality. We embed this complementarity in a general-equilibrium trade model with...