While many studies explain the correlation between firm-level productivity and export status entirely by better firms self-selecting into exporting, a few studies find evidence of reverse causation. Especially in developing or transition economies, exporters seem to improve performance after...

This paper provides a direct test of how fixed export costs and productivity jointly determine firm-level export behavior. Using Chilean data, we construct indices of fixed export costs for each industry-region-year triplet and match them to domestic firms. Our empirical results show that firms...

Many studies have provided evidence that the correlation between firm-level productivity and export status is driven by more productive firms self-selecting into exporting. Nevertheless, a few studies have also found evidence for a reverse channel of causation. Especially in developing or...

This paper estimates the effects of trade liberalization on plant productivity. In contrast to previous studies, we distinguish between productivity gains arising from lower tariffs on final goods relative to lower tariffs on intermediate inputs. Lower output tariffs can produce productivity...

This paper investigates how input trade liberalization affects fi rm-level wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor. A fall in input tariffs generates increased fi rm pro fits, which, in turn, widens wage inequality since skilled labor enjoys a larger proportion of the incremental pro...

This paper uses firm-level data for Mexican exporters to understand how firm-level export decisions shape a country's aggregate exports. The data allows for a characterization of both the crosssectional distribution of Mexican exports, across destinations and across exporting firms, and of the...

Firms play a critical role in the global economy. In this paper, we survey the behavior of firms in the international economy, both in theory and in the data. We first summarize the key empirical facts that motivate the study of firms in trade. Then, we detail recent theoretical developments on...

We examine import prices paid by direct-sourcing Indian manufacturing firms in the early 2000s using a unique data set that matches firm characteristics with product and source-country trade data, offering a theoretical and empirical extension of Halpern and Koren (2007). We find that import...

This paper develops a general equilibrium model of international trade with heterogeneous exporters and heterogeneous importers. This theory is guided by new findings drawn from a matched exporter-importer dataset that characterizes the relationships between exporting and importing firms. I find...

Recent theoretical research shows that exporters are more productive than nonexporters. We show that this result holds almost trivially for the case of constant marginal cost of production, as mainly assumed in the literature, but it may not hold true if the marginal cost is not constant. Our...