Few firms import, even when formal trade barriers are low and despite substantial potential gains. Likely reasons are uncertainty and informational frictions, creating scope for local peers to affect new importers. We explore this hypothesis using data on French imports by...

We estimate partial- and total-fuel substitution elasticities between electricity, gas and oil, using firm-level data. We find that, based on the partial elasticity measure, electricity is the least-responsive fuel to changes in its own price and in the price of other fuels. The total elasticity...

Is ownership change an opportunity for new owners to make systematic changes in the workforce of the acquired plant? This paper explores the adjustments to plant size and the composition of the workforce that occur around ownership change using matched employer-employee data. Furthermore, we...

Aggregate exports are not very responsive to real exchange rates, though they respond strongly to trade liberalizations, a fact sometimes referred to as the International Elasticity Puzzle. We use micro data on firms and exports for Ireland to dissect the puzzle. Our identification strategy uses...

We document how export quantities and prices evolve after entry to a market. Controlling for marginal cost, and taking account of selection on idiosyncratic demand, there are economically and statistically significant dynamics of quantities, but no dynamics of prices. To match these facts, we...