Large multiproduct exporters across rich and poor countries: Theory and evidence

Flexibility and Productivity: Toward the Understanding of Firm Heterogeneity

“…appendix A: summary statistics for asip and customs data Chinese multiproduct firms dominate the country's exports: 77% of exporters sell at least two products, that is, two HS eight-digit codes, in a destination, and they account for 94% of total export value. Such results are in line with the evidence documented for several other countries by Bernard et al (2007), Mayer et al (2014), Arkolakis et al (2021), andMacedoni (2017). Our sample of matched firms exhibits a similar distribution: 78% of the firms in the sample are multiproduct, and they account for 96% of the sample's total exports.…”

“…To demonstrate this, we study the welfare effects of the trade tension between the United States and China in recent years. In particular, we consider the effects of an increase in the iceberg trade costs from the United States to China by 12.9% and from China to the United States by 17.0%, which corresponds to the average increase in the tariffs in the years 2017-2019(Benguria et al, 2020. Since tariffs are part of the iceberg trade costs, it is reasonable to model the tariff war as an increase in τ , although we should note that we are abstracting from changes in government revenues.…”

“…These two facts are in stark contrast to the predictions of single‐attribute models. In these models, the scope of firms only depends on the firm productivity and on destination characteristics (Bernard et al., 2011; Mayer et al., 2014; Macedoni, 2017) with no room for other shocks. Furthermore, such models predict a positive one‐to‐one mapping between sales and scope driven by productivity (Bernard et al., 2011).…”

Oligopoly and oligopsony in international trade

“…Our method is motivated by recent empirical research indicating that firms can also influence their prices in input markets (Morlacco, 2017;Brooks et al, 2021;Yeh et al, 2022). 6 Although the international trade literature has studied the role played by large oligopolists (Atkeson and Burstein, 2008;Feenstra and Ma, 2007;Eckel and Neary, 2010;Amiti et al, 2014;Edmond et al, 2015;Neary, 2016;Macedoni, 2022a;Dhyne et al, 2022;Impullitti et al, 2022), oligopsony has received little attention until the recent years. 7…”

“…Although the international trade literature has studied the role played by large oligopolists (Atkeson and Burstein, 2008; Feenstra and Ma, 2007; Eckel and Neary, 2010; Amiti et al, 2014; Edmond et al, 2015; Neary, 2016; Macedoni, 2022a; Dhyne et al, 2022; Impullitti et al, 2022), oligopsony has received little attention until the recent years. Our paper closely relates to the work of MacKenzie (2018), who studies the effect of oligopsony from an allocative efficiency perspective.…”