We provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade in services, using unique firm-level data on services exports and imports in the United Kingdom in 2000- 2005. Less than 10% of firms trade in services but they can be found in all sectors of the UK economy. While...

This paper analyzes mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a previously neglected channel of industrial restructuring in the face of trade liberalization. Using the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 as a natural experiment, I show that trade liberalization leads to a significant...

We examine the qualitative and quantitative predictions of a heterogeneous firm model à la Melitz (2003) in the context of the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We calibrate our model to the pre-trade liberalization stage, simulate the trade liberalization, and compute the...

We provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade in services, using unique data on firm-level exports and imports from the world's second largest services exporter, the United Kingdom (UK). We show that only a fraction of UK firms engage in international trade in...

We propose a model of firm expansion and contraction choices which integrates approaches from the industrial organization and corporate finance literature within one unified setting. Firms respond to shocks to their marginal costs by expanding or contracting output via internal or external...

This paper presents novel empirical evidence on key predictions of heterogeneous firm models by examining stock market reactions to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989. Using the uncertainty surrounding the agreement's ratification, I show that the pattern of abnormal returns...

This paper studies how the depreciation of sterling following the Brexit referendum affected consumer prices in the United Kingdom. Our identification strategy uses input-output linkages to account for heterogeneity in exposure to import costs across product groups. We show that, after the...

How does import protection affect export performance? In trade models with scale economies, import liberalization can reduce industry-level exports by cutting domestic production. We show that this export destruction mechanism reduced US export growth following the permanent normalization of...

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms during the period 1995-2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source services and goods inputs from the same origin country rather than from...