The practice of trade cost measurement faces several challenges related to data quality, methodology and theory; but the major issue is that of data scarcity. Due to these facts both domestic and asymmetric trade costs have been ignored despite being a feature of modern trade models. This paper...

Globalization has radically changed the way in how goods and services are produced. The impact of globalization on production has been driven mainly by two determinants: In a first phase, a quick fall in transportation costs between countries and in a second, more recent phase, a drastic...

This paper provides a direct test of how fixed export costs and productivity jointly determine firm-level export behavior. Using Chilean data, we construct indices of fixed export costs for each industry-region-year triplet and match them to domestic firms. Our empirical results show that firms...

We analyze the decline in the U.S. share of world merchandise exports against the backdrop of a model-based measure of competitiveness. We preliminarily use constant market share analysis and gravity estimations to show that the majority of the decline in export shares can be associated with a...

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 paper discusses how international trade is organized from export to trans-boundary transport to import. All evidence suggests that the transport sector is independent, may exercise market power and features strong economies of scale. We develop a model of a transport industry that operates...

This paper derives a micro-founded gravity equation in general equilibrium based on a translog demand system that allows for endogenous markups and rich substitution patterns across goods. In contrast to standard CES-based gravity equations, trade is more sensitive to trade costs if the...

Based on a many-industry Chamberlinian-Ricardian trade model with iceberg trade costs, this note examines the impact of two modes of economic integration: a reduction in trade costs, and technical standardization due to information spillover. It is shown that these two modes of economic...

We investigate theoretically and empirically how exporters adjust their markups across destinations depending on bilateral distance, tariffs, and the quality of their exports. Under the assumption that trade costs are both ad valorem and per unit, our model predicts that markups rise with...