Firms in international trade
By: Andrew B. Bernard, J. Bradford Jensen, Stephen Redding and Peter K. Schott
Contributors: London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance
Series: CEP discussion paper -- no. 795
Publisher: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science
Published: 2007
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Format: [electronic resource] /
Description: Despite the fact that importing and exporting are extremely rare firm activities, economists generally devote little attention to the role of firms when discussing international trade. This paper summarizes key differences between trading and non-trading firms, demonstrates how these differences present a challenge to standard trade models and shows how recent "heterogeneous-firm" models of international trade address these challenges. We then make use of transaction-level U.S. trade data to introduce a number of new stylized facts about firms and trade. These facts reveal that the extensive margins of trade--that is, the number of products firms trade as well as the number of countries with which they trade--are central to understanding the well-known role of distance in dampening aggregate trade flows.
Notes: Title from publisher's abstract page (viewed on July 6, 2007).

"May 2007."

Includes bibliographical references.

Also available in print.

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Mode of access: World Wide Web.