We develop and structurally estimate a trade model in order to identify the importance of consumer taste for exporters. The model separates taste from quality and productivity (TFPQ) at the firm-product level. Export data by destination countries allow us to identify the level of taste from...

We examine import prices paid by direct-sourcing Indian manufacturing firms in the early 2000s using a unique data set that matches firm characteristics with product and source-country trade data, offering a theoretical and empirical extension of Halpern and Koren (2007). We find that import...

This paper documents the importance of consumer taste in trade flows using Belgian firm-product customs data by destination. We identify consumer taste through the use of a control function approach and estimate it jointly with other demand parameters using a very flexible demand specification....

This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from 1998-2005 to generate a "taste distance" measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate consumer taste using a control function approach and...

This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from 1998-2005 to generate a "taste distance" measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate consumer taste using a control function approach and...

We investigate the implications of consumer nationalism for multilateral trade cooperation. We develop a two-country, two-firm model, in which the firms produce horizontally differentiated products and act as Bertrand competitors. Assuming that there is asymmetry in consumer nationalism between...

This paper aims to explain why some consumers may rationally object to free trade. I describe a differentiated-goods economy in which agents differ in their preferences across categories of goods. Due to increasing returns in production the number of goods produced in a given category depends on...

The recent availability of trade data at a firm-product-country level calls for a new generation of models able to exploit the large variability detected across observations. By developing a model of monopolistic competition in which varieties enter preferences non-symmetrically, we show how...

This paper documents the importance of consumer taste in trade flows using Belgian firm-product customs data by destination. We identify consumer taste through the use of a control function approach and estimate it jointly with other demand parameters using a very flexible demand specification....

Many trade models of monopolistic competition identify cost efficiency as the main determinant of firm performance in export markets. To date, the analysis of demand factors has received much less attention. We propose a new model where consumer preferences are asymmetric across varieties and...