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...

This paper develops and applies a test of the property rights theory of the firm in the context of global input sourcing. We use the model by Pol Antràs and Elhanan Helpman, “Global Sourcing," Journal of Political Economy, 112:3 (2004), 552-80, to derive a new prediction regarding how the...

This paper investigates the role of firm productivity in drawing firm boundaries in global sourcing. Our analysis focuses on how productivity affects the allocation of ownership rights between the headquarter of a firm and an intermediate input supplier (vertical integration vs. outsourcing), as...

We use Spanish firm-level data to test the hold-up model of global sourcing proposed by Antr s & Helpman (2004). We propose a novel representation of the model which guides us in bringing the theory to the data. We estimate a discrete choice model of firms' sourcing behavior, separately for the...

This paper investigates the role of firm productivity in drawing firm boundaries in global sourcing. Our analysis focuses on how productivity affects the allocation of ownership rights between the headquarter of a firm and an intermediate input supplier (vertical integration vs. outsourcing), as...

This paper develops and applies a test of the property rights theory of the firm in the context of global input sourcing. We use the model by Pol Antràs and Elhanan Helpman, "Global Sourcing," Journal of Political Economy, 112:3 (2004), 552-80, to derive a new prediction regarding how the...

Empirical literature has established a positive link between firm productivity and export status, yet notable exceptions exist. The present paper shows that the underlying theory (Melitz, 2003) is in fact able to accommodate the rule as well as the exception. The fulcrum of the argument is the...

We generalize Krugman's (1979) ‘new trade’ model by allowing for an explicit production chain in which a range of tasks is performed sequentially by a number of specialized teams. We demonstrate that an increase in market size induces a deeper division of labor among these teams which leads...

The marginal costs based representation of firm productivity in the Melitz [Melitz, M.J., 2003. The impact of trade on intra-industry reallocations and aggregate industry productiv- ity. Econometrica 71 (6), 1695-1725] model, predicts positive exporter productivity premia. We show that this...

This paper investigates the role of firm productivity in drawing firm boundaries in global sourcing. Our analysis focuses on how productivity affects the allocation of ownership rights between the headquarter of a firm and an intermediate input supplier (vertical integration vs. outsourcing), as...