This paper examines the response of industries and firms to changes in trade costs. Several new firm-level models of international trade with heterogeneous firms predict that industry productivity will rise as trade costs fall due to the reallocation of activity across plants within an industry....

This paper examines the causes of manufacturing plant deaths within and across industries in the U.S. from 1977-1997. The effects of international competition from low wage countries, exporting, ownership structure, product diversity, productivity, geography, and plant characteristics are...

This paper presents a dynamic model of the export decision by a profit-maximizing firm. Using a panel of U.S. manufacturing plants, we test for the role of plant characteristics, spillovers from neighboring exporters, entry costs and government export promotion expenditures. Entry and exit in...

This paper examines the role of changing factor endowments in the growth and decline of industries and regions. The implications of an endowment-based Heckscher-Ohlin trade model for plant entry and exit are tested on 20 years of data for the entire US manufacturing sector. The trade model...