Volatility, Labor Market Flexibility, and the Pattern of Comparative Advantage

This paper studies the link between volatility, labor market flexibility, and international trade. International differences in labor market regulations affect how firms can adjust to idiosyncratic shocks. These institutional differences interact with sector specific differences in volatility (the variance of the firm-specific shocks in a sector) to generate a new source of comparative advantage. Other things equal, countries with more flexible labor markets specialize in sectors with higher volatility. Empirical evidence for a large sample of countries strongly supports this theory: the exports of countries with more flexible labor markets are biased towards high-volatility sectors. We show how differences in labor market institutions can be parsimoniously integrated into the workhorse model of Ricardian comparative advantage of Dornbush, Fisher and Samuelson (1977). We also show how our model can be extended to multiple factors of production.comparative advantage

International Trade and Macroeconomic Dynamics with Heterogeneous Firms

We develop a stochastic, general equilibrium, two-country model of trade and macroeconomic dynamics. Productivity differs across individual, monopolistically competitive firms in each country. Firms face a sunk entry cost in the domestic market and both fixed and per-unit export costs. Only relatively more productive firms export. Exogenous shocks to aggregate productivity and entry or trade costs induce firms to enter and exit both their domestic and export markets, thus altering the composition of consumption baskets across countries over time. In a world of flexible prices, our model generates endogenously persistent deviations from PPP that would not exist absent our microeconomic structure with heterogeneous firms. It provides an endogenous, microfounded explanation for a Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson effect in response to aggregate productivity differentials and deregulation. Finally, the model successfully matches several moments of U.S. and international business cycles.

Market Size, Trade, and Productivity

We develop a monopolistically competitive model of trade with firm heterogeneity - in terms of productivity differences - and endogenous differences in the ‘toughness’ of competition across markets - in terms of the number and average productivity of competing firms. We analyze how these features vary across markets of different size that are not perfectly integrated through trade; we then study the effects of different trade liberalization policies. In our model, market size and trade affect the toughness of competition, which then feeds back into the selection of heterogeneous producers and exporters in that market. Aggregate productivity and average markups thus respond to both the size of a market and the extent of its integration through trade (larger, more integrated markets exhibit higher productivity and lower markups). Our model remains highly tractable, even when extended to a general framework with multiple asymmetric countries integrated to different extents through asymmetric trade costs. We believe this provides a useful modeling framework that is particularly well suited to the analysis of trade and regional integration policy scenarios in an environment with heterogeneous firms and endogenous markups.market structure, market size, productivity heterogeneity, endogenous markups, trade liberalization

Market Size, Trade, and Productivity

We develop a monopolistically competitive model of trade with firm heterogeneity - in terms of productivity differences - and endogenous differences in the 'toughness' of competition across markets - in terms of the number and average productivity of competing firms. We analyze how these features vary across markets of different size that are not perfectly integrated through trade; we then study the effects of different trade liberalization policies. In our model, market size and trade affect the toughness of competition, which then feeds back into the selection of heterogeneous producers and exporters in that market. Aggregate productivity and average markups thus respond to both the size of a market and the extent of its integration through trade (larger, more integrated markets exhibit higher productivity and lower markups). Our model remains highly tractable, even when extended to a general framework with multiple asymmetric countries integrated to different extents through asymmetric trade costs. We believe this provides a useful modeling framework that is particularly well suited to the analysis of trade and regional integration policy scenarios in an environment with heterogeneous firms and endogenous markups.

Endogenous Entry, Product Variety, and Business Cycles

This paper builds a framework for the analysis of macroeconomic fluctuations that incorporates the endogenous determination of the number of producers over the business cycle. Economic expansions induce higher entry rates by prospective entrants subject to irreversible investment costs. The sluggish response of the number of producers (due to the sunk entry costs) generates a new and potentially important endogenous propagation mechanism for real business cycle models. The stock-market price of investment (corresponding to the creation of new productive units) determines household saving decisions, producer entry, and the allocation of labor across sectors. The model performs at least as well as the benchmark real business cycle model with respect to the implied second-moment properties of key macroeconomic aggregates. In addition, our framework jointly predicts a procyclical number of producers and procyclical profits even for preference specifications that imply countercyclical markups. When we include physical capital, the model can reproduce the variance and autocorrelation of GDP found in the data.

Export versus FDI

This paper builds a multi-country, multi-sector general equilibrium model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either through exports or local subsidiary sales (FDI). These modes of market access involve different relative costs, some of which are sunk while others vary with sales volume (such as transport costs and tariffs). Relative to investment in a subsidiary, exporting involves lower sunk costs but higher per-unit costs. In equilibrium, only the more productive firms choose to serve the foreign markets and the most productive among this group will further choose to serve the overseas market via FDI. The paper then explores several implications of the individual firms' decisions for aggregate export and FDI sales relative to the domestic and foreign market sizes. In particular, it is shown that firm level heterogeneity is an important determinant of relative export and FDI flows. We use the model to derive testable empirical predictions on the relative aggregate export and FDI sales in a given country for a given sector based both on relative costs and the extent of firm level heterogeneity in that sector. These predictions are tested on data of US affiliate sales and US exports in 38 different countries and 52 sectors. The comparative statics based on relative costs are very similar to those tested by Brainard (AER 1997) and are confirmed in our data: sector/country specific transport costs and tariffs have a strong negative effect on export sales relative to FDI. More importantly, our new predictions for the effects of firm-level heterogeneity on the relative export and FDI sales are also strongly supported by the data: more heterogeneity leads to significantly more FDI sales relative to export sales.

Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters

We build a theoretical model of multi-product firms that highlights how market size and geography (the market sizes of and bilateral economic distances to trading partners) affect both a firm\'s ex-ported product range and its exported product mix across market destinations (the distribution of sales across products for a given product range). We show how tougher competition in an export market induces a firm to skew its export sales towards its best performing products. We find very strong confirmation of this competitive effect for French exporters across export market destina-tions. Trade models based on exogenous markups cannot explain this strong significant link between destination market characteristics and the within-firm skewness of export sales (after controlling for bilateral trade costs. Theoretically, this within firm change in product mix driven by the trading environment has important repercussions on firm productivity and how it responds to changes in that trading environment.

Export versus FDI

This paper builds a multi-country, multi-sector general equilibrium model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either through exports or local subsidiary sales (FDI). These modes of market access involve different relative costs, some of which are sunk while others vary with sales volume (such as transport costs and tariffs). Relative to investment in a subsidiary, exporting involves lower sunk costs but higher per-unit costs. In equilibrium, only the more productive firms choose to serve the foreign markets and the most productive among this group will further choose to serve the overseas market via FDI. The paper then explores several implications of the individual firms' decisions for aggregate export and FDI sales relative to the domestic and foreign market sizes. In particular, it is shown that firm level heterogeneity is an important determinant of relative export and FDI flows. We use the model to derive testable empirical predictions on the relative aggregate export and FDI sales in a given country for a given sector based both on relative costs and the extent of firm level heterogeneity in that sector. These predictions are tested on data of US affiliate sales and US exports in 38 different countries and 52 sectors. The comparative statics based on relative costs are very similar to those tested by Brainard (AER 1997) and are confirmed in our data: sector/country specific transport costs and tariffs have a strong negative effect on export sales relative to FDI. More importantly, our new predictions for the effects of firm-level heterogeneity on the relative export and FDI sales are also strongly supported by the data: more heterogeneity leads to significantly more FDI sales relative to export sales.