The production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a precondition for export success and economic development. We provide the first evidence that countries' import tariffs affect the rate at which they upgrade product quality. Our analysis uses highly disaggregated data covering exports...

How does competition affect innovation? We address this question by using a novel approach to measure quality - an important component of innovation - using highly disaggregated product data for a large set of countries. Constructing an internationally comparable measure of quality enables us to...