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...

This paper presents theory and evidence on horizontal industry structure, focusing on situations where plant-level scale economies are small and market power is not an issue. At issue is the question: what makes industries necessarily fragmented? The theoretical model distinguishes between the...

We determine empirically how the Big Three automakers accommodate shocks to demand. They have the capability to change prices, alter labor inputs through temporary layoffs and overtime, or adjust inventories. These adjustments are interrelated, non-convex, and dynamic in nature. Combining weekly...

Firms' decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard...

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....

In this paper I analyze the productivity gains from trade liberalization in the Belgian textile industry. So far, empirical research has established a strong relationship between opening up to trade and productivity, relying almost entirely on deflated sales to proxy for output in the production...

Using a unique data set on store-level monthly prices of four homogenous products sold in Israel, I study the existence and characteristics of the dispersion of prices across stores, as well as its persistence over time. I find that price dispersion prevails even after controlling for observed...

This paper examines the determinants of productivity in Japanese manufacturing industries, looking particularly at the impact of product market competition on productivity. Using a newly available panel data on around ten thousand firms in Japanese manufacturing for the years 1994-2000, I show...

We present a general equilibrium model of the decisions of firms to innovate and to engage in international trade. We use the model to analyze the impact of a reduction in international trade costs on firms' process and product innovative activity. We first show analytically that if all firms...

The roll-out of Wal-Mart store openings followed a pattern that radiated from the center out with Wal-Mart maintaining high store density and a contiguous store network all along the way. This paper estimates the benefits of such a strategy to Wal-Mart, focusing on the savings in distribution...