The long and short (of) quality ladders
By: Amit Khandelwal.
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 15178; Working paper series (National Bureau of Economic Research : Online) -- working paper no. 15178.
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "Prices are typically used as proxies for countries' export quality.  I relax this strong assumption by exploiting both price and quantity information to estimate the quality of products exported to the U.S.  Higher quality is assigned to products with higher market shares conditional on price.  The estimated qualities reveal substantial heterogeneity in product markets' scope for quality differentiation, or their "quality ladders.'' I use this variation to explain the heterogeneous impact of low-wage competition on U.S.  manufacturing employment and output.  Markets characterized by relatively shorter quality ladders are associated with larger employment and output declines resulting from low-wage competition"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 8/14/2009.

Includes bibliographical references.

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