Digital intensity, trade costs and exports' quality upgrading

Quality Selection, Chinese Exports and Theories of Heterogeneous Firm Trade

Recent empirical and theoretical studies have identified product quality as an important determinant of bilateral trade flows. Yet relatively little is understood about the relationship between the characteristics of the export market and the quality of products. In this paper we examine this link using Chinese data. We find evidence that product unit values vary with standard gravity variables...

“Food Processing Firms, Input Quality Upgrading and Trade”

In this paper the heterogeneous firms and trade literature is extended by integrating quality of inputs and outputs in a food and agricultural setting. Recently, Sexton (2013) has suggested that intermediate agricultural input quality is critical in food processing firms’ output quality and pricing decisions. The results presented in this paper indicate that intermediate agricultural input qual...

“Quality Upgrading, Trade, and Market Structure in Food-Processing Industries”

In this paper the heterogeneous firms and trade literature is extended by integrating quality of inputs and outputs in a food and agricultural setting, along with an analysis of how the ability to translate capability into higher product quality is critical in evaluating the cut-offs for food processing firms to enter domestic and export markets. Specifically, it is found that the direction of ...

Preferential Trade, Sunk Costs, and the Path-Dependent Expansion of Exports

In the presence of sunk costs to exporting, preferential tariff liberalization may have a prolonged, dynamic effect on the pattern of a beneficiary country’s exports. In particular, when preferential market access helps overcome product specific fixed costs to exporting, preferential tariff liberalization might trigger a geographic spread of exports to third markets outside the preferential tra...

Gravity Model of Trade and Russian Exports