We propose a model to study the role of industry-level external economies scale in open economies. If elasticity governing strength is below inverse trade each industry, then specialization under frictionless consistent with comparative advantage, tractable even frictions, and all countries gain from trade. External lower gains except if country specializes industries high economies, they ampli...

This paper examines the effects of trade openness on the optimal incentives firms provide to their managers (and hence firm-level productivity) in the new heterogeneous-firm trade framework. Export market selection and firm heterogeneity are shown to be the key determinants of firm owners’ optimal choices of the incentive contracts, which affect the cost-reduction efforts of their managers. I s...

according to the literature, economic liberalization is an important factor affecting the intra industry trade (iit). present paper is trying to examine the positive effect of economic liberalization on iran’s iit as well as to review the effectiveness of important components of economic liberalization including privatization, trade liberalization, exchange rate liberalization and financial lib...

Using quantile regression and a rich cross section data set for German manufacturing plants this paper documents that the impact of plant characteristics on export activities varies along the conditional size distribution of the export/sales ratio. For example, firm size is statistically significant at a conventional level for the 0.25 quantile only; branch plant status matters at the upper tai...

The recent literature on firm exporting behaviour has pointed out to sunk-cost as key determinant of export behaviour yet little insight into what they include or how they vary with experience. In this paper we provide fresh evidence on the barriers to exporting and the role of export experience and other firm-level characteristics. Our results indicate that experience matters but in a non-line...

We examine micro-level channels of how financial development can affect macroeconomic outcomes like the level of income and export intensity. We investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm’s innovation and export activities, using unique firm survey data which provides direct measures for innovations and firm-specific financial constraints. We find that fin...

This paper investigates whether differences across countries in overall country-specific trade costs affect comparative advantage. It does so by examining whether the commodity composition of countries’ trade is driven by differences in countries’ trade costs, as well as by differences in traditional factor endowments. Industry export shares across up to 71 countries and 158 manufacturing indus...

Productivity Effects of International Outsourcing: Evidence from Plant Level Data* We investigate the impact of international outsourcing on productivity using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. Specifically, we distinguish the effect of outsourcing of materials from services inputs. Moreover, we examine whether the impact on productivity is different for plants being more embedded in in...

Under a flexible exchange rate regime, the Canadian economy is constantly affected by fluctuations in exchange rates. This paper focuses on the effect of the exchange rate on employment in Canada. We find that appreciation of the Canadian dollar has significant effects on employment in manufacturing industries; such effects are mostly associated with the export-weighted exchange rate, but not t...

What drives export quality? Using firm-level data from Portugal on exports by product and destination market, we find that free-on-board unit values increase systematically with distance, and tend to be higher in shipments to richer nations. These relationships reflect not only the selection of firms across markets, but also the within-firm selection of product varieties across destinations. Fu...