This paper presents an extension of the analysis of the geographic dimension of trade, by examining the trading patterns of individual firms. Aggregate data does not tell us if a sector is geographically diversified because there are many exporting firms, each of which specialises in a separate...

This paper examines the structural relation between persuasive advertising intensity and market concentration. The interaction of advertising costs with the consumer’s willingness to pay shapes the way markets respond to changes in sunk cost structures. This adjustment may involve firm entry...

We propose a dynamic model of an oligopoly industry characterized by spatial competition between multi-store retailers. Firms compete in prices and decide where to open or close stores depending on demand conditions and the number of competitors at different locations, and on location-specific...

Traditional specifications of export equations incorporate foreign demand as a demand pull factor and the real exchange rate as a relative price variable. However, such standard export equations have failed to explain the export performance of euro area countries during the crisis period. In...

Governments frequently intervene to support domestic industries, but a surprising amount of this support goes to ailing sectors. We explain this with a lobbying model that allows for entry and sunk costs. Specifically, policy is influenced by pressure groups that incur lobbying expenses to...

This paper analyses the sources of persistence in conducting R&D activities by SMEs. The data used is a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms drawn from the Survey of Business Strategies (ESEE), for the period 1990-2011. We estimate discrete time proportional hazard models accounting for firm...

Two of the most robust results from dynamic competitive models of industrial organization suggest that higher-sunk-cost industries should exhibit higher intertemporal variability in the market value of their firms and lower intertemporal variability in the size of their industries. These...

In endeavouring to explain the empirical puzzle that the sunk costs of exporting are important, but that, at the same time, trade flows do not, on average, survive for very long, this paper explores the concepts of core and peripheral markets. First, it illustrates that if the importance of sunk...