This paper documents the importance of consumer taste in trade flows using Belgian firm-product customs data by destination. We identify consumer taste through the use of a control function approach and estimate it jointly with other demand parameters using a very flexible demand specification....

This paper develops an empirical model of consumer taste in twenty-nine Belgium food industries for the period from 1998-2005 to generate a "taste distance" measure of over 1,800 firm-product exports to 53 country destinations. We estimate consumer taste using a control function approach and...

We develop and structurally estimate a trade model in order to identify the importance of consumer taste. The model separates taste from quality and productivity (TFPQ) at the firm-product level. Export data by destination countries allow us to identify the level of taste from consumer...

In this paper we investigate to what extent firm investment in transition countries is sensitive to internal finance. We use accounts data of over 4000 companies in four countries at different stages of transition. We find that firms in Bulgaria and Romania are less sensitive to internal...

This paper empirically investigates the effects of US safeguard protection on steel imports in 2002 on the mark-ups of EU steel producers. We identify a large panel of European steel producers between 1995 and 2004 affected by the safeguards. Using the Roeger method, our results show that US...

This paper develops a model where firms across countries differ in their capacity to innovate. Our main goal is to study firm level innovation under various trade policy shocks. We consider two countries where firms across countries are heterogeneous in their innovation efficiencies. We find...

This paper empirically evaluates the effects of antidumping measures on the exports of protected firms. While antidumping protection raises the domestic sales of the more 'traditional?non-exporting firms on the protected market with about 5%, it negatively affects the firm-level exports of...

Advocates of antidumping (AD) laws downplay their effects by arguing that the trade flows that are subject to AD are small and their distortions negligible. This paper is the first to counter that notion by quantifying the worldwide effect of AD laws on aggregate trade flows. The recent...

This paper provides empirical evidence of a more favorable tax treatment for foreign multinationals compared to similar domestic firms in a small open economy. Using treatment effects to control for self-selection of foreign firms into low tax firms, we find that foreign multinationals have...

In this paper we study the effect of import competition from China on the Belgian textiles sector. Our analysis comprises both trade data and firm-level data. We study the evolution of the unit values in textiles exported from China into the EU versus textiles exported from Belgium to the rest...