Firm-Destination Heterogeneity and the Distribution of Export Intensity

We derive closed-form expressions for the distribution of export intensity when firm-destination-specific revenue shifters are distributed gamma and Frechet in a two-country model of trade with isoelastic demand. We estimate the parameters governing the distribution of export intensity for each type of revenue shifter in 72 countries. We compare the model’s fit to the distribution of export intensity across countries when revenue shifters are distributed lognormal, gamma and Frechet and find that while lognormal slightly outperforms the other two, all three types of revenue shifters reproduce salient features of export intensity distributions within and across countries quite successfully