Is the variation in bilateral trade flows across countries primarily due to differences in the number of exporting firms (the extensive margin) or in the average size of an exporter (the intensive margin)? And how does this affect the estimation and quantitative implications of the Melitz (2003)...

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

Larger Indian firms selling inputs to other firms tend to have more customers, tend to be used more intensively by their customers, and tend to have larger customers. Motivated by these regularities, I propose a novel empirical model of trade featuring endogenous formation of input-output...

Based on a theoretical model featuring heterogeneous retailers that may source globally and operate as chains, we derive a number of hypotheses that link trade integration to retail firm performance and to the structure of retail markets. We empirically test these predictions using Danish...

This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

This paper presents a trade model with capital and labor as factors of production. The main contribution of this paper is that it considers a new type of firm heterogeneity, which is empirically relevant: firms in this paper differ with respect to their factor shares in production. Therefore,...

How are the dynamics of foreign and domestic sales correlated at the firm level? The question is relevant in that the sign of the correlation shapes the international transmission of shocks and the effects of policy measures. From a theoretical perspective, the correlation could be either zero,...

We present a general equilibrium model of the response of firms' decisions to operate, innovate, and engage in international trade to a change in the marginal cost of international trade. We find that, although a change in trade costs can have a substantial impact on heterogeneous firms' exit,...

We quantify and explain the firm responses and worker impacts of foreign demand shocks to domestic production networks. To capture that firms can be indirectly exposed to such shocks by buying from or selling to domestic firms that import or export, we use Belgian data with information on both...

We undertake a trade-growth accounting exercise by decomposing data on changes in bilateral international trade flows into their direct (endowment accumulation, productivity growth, changes in trade costs, changing preferences) and indirect components (general equilibrium effects). Furthermore,...