Firms selling products abroad usually have to interact with several border agencies that develop multiple trade regulations and oversee their compliance. These regulations establish the procedures that these firms have to follow and the documents that they have to obtain, fill in, and submit for...

We examine transaction-level Peruvian import data to show that firms are subject to significant costs of port-of-entry delays. At the transaction level, we observe the time it takes a shipment to clear each step in the entry process. Our theory shows conditions under which observed entry times...

International trade is subject to information incompleteness. Firms must therefore engage in a costly search process to find business partners. Online platforms can reduce these search costs and thereby favor firms exports. We examine whether this is actually the case and the underlying...

In the global recession of 2009, exports declined precipitously in many countries. We illustrate with firm-level data for Belgium and Peru that the decline was very sudden and almost entirely due to lower export sales by existing exporters. After the recession, exports rebounded almost equally...