We conduct a randomized control trial that generates exogenous variation in the access to foreign markets for rug producers in Egypt. Combined with detailed survey data, we causally identify the impact of exporting on profits and productivity. Treatment firms report 15-25 percent higher profits...

Researchers typically invoke theoretical assumptions to estimate mark-ups. Instead, we directly obtain mark-ups by surveying Pakistani soccer-ball producers. We document six facts: (1) Mark-ups are more dispersed than costs; (2) Mark-ups and costs increase with firm size; (3) The mark-up...

This paper examines how prices, markups and marginal costs respond to trade liberalization. We develop a framework to estimate markups from production data with multi-product firms. This approach does not require assumptions on the market structure or demand curves faced by firms, nor...

Individuals that consume different baskets of goods are differentially affected by relative price changes caused by international trade. We develop a methodology to measure the unequal gains from trade across consumers within countries that is applicable across countries and time. The approach...

If trade barriers are managed by inefficient institutions, trade liberalization can lead to greater-than-expected gains. We examine Chinese textile and clothing exports before and after the elimination of externally imposed export quotas. We find that the surge in export value and decline in...

We provide systematic evidence that intermediaries play an important role in facilitating trade using a firm-level the census of China's exports. Intermediaries account for around 20% of China's exports in 2005. This implies that many firms engage in trade without directly exporting products. We...

It is important to understand the factors that influence a country's transition from the production of low-quality to high-quality products since the production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a pre-condition for export success and, ultimately, for economic development. In this paper,...

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...

Recent theoretical work predicts that an important margin of adjustment to deregulation or trade reforms is the reallocation of output within firms through changes in their product mix. Empirical work has accordingly shifted its focus towards multi-product firms and their product mix decisions....

New goods play a central role in many trade and growth models. We use detailed trade and firm-level data from a large developing economy--India--to investigate the relationship between declines in trade costs, the imports of intermediate inputs and domestic firm product scope. We estimate...