Investigations of the effect of quality differences on heterogeneous performance in exporting have been limited by lack of direct measures of quality. We examine exports of French wine, matching the exporting firms to producer ratings from two wine guides. We show that high quality producers...

This paper analyzes the reaction of exporters to exchange rate changes. We present a model where, in the presence of distribution costs in the export market, high and low productivity firms react differently to a depreciation. Whereas high productivity firms optimally raise their markup rather...

We analyze the interaction of economic and political determinants of free trade agreements (FTA). In addition to standard trade gains, FTAs can promote peaceful relations by offering a political forum and by increasing the opportunity cost of conflicts that disrupt trade. If policy makers...

ResumenMediante un modelo de equilibrio general computable, en el que se discrimina un sector informal en la economía, se modela el sector formal como un mercado de competencia monopolística. Además de incluir mercados de trabajo discriminados, este modelo también evalúa el impacto del...

Resumen Hace más de 2 décadas en México se empezó a dar un cambio radical en el modelo económico. La economía mexicana, que se había caracterizado en la década de los 70 por un bajo grado de apertura, se convirtió entre los años 80 y 90 en una de las economías más abiertas de la...

Despite the importance of industrial and geographical diversification of exports, the literature says little about what a “normal” level of diversification is. This paper takes a step in this direction and develops a methodology to measure a normal level of diversification along industry and...

This paper develops a methodology for trade policy analysis of costs and benefits of alternative regional integration scenarios, based on the disaggregated gravity equation, and applies it to calculate the impact of the EU enlargement on integration strategies of non-member countries. In...

The objective of this paper is to analyse the differences in price-marginal cost margins of the export and domestic markets by the estimation of a multiproduct cost function. We apply this method to a panel of Spanish export manufacturing firms from the period 1990-1997. Some results emerge from...

In this paper we examine whether the conventional result of a greater degree of integration leading to lower price-cost margins (i.e., the pro-competitive effect), would hold when two countries integrate by forming a common market. We propose a general framework of reference, in order to assess...

This paper presents a unified framework for analyzing several factors that have been independently studied as determinants of unit values in international trade: product differentiation by quality (which suggests that unit values should be positively correlated with exporters' per capita...