Entrepreneurship and the extensive margin in export growth : a microeconomic accounting of Costa Rica's export growth during 1997-2007

The literature on the correlation between exports and economic development runs deep into the history of economic thought and permeates policy debates. This paper studies the microeconomic structure of export growth in Costa Rica, with special emphasis on the extensive margin of trade, encompassing new exporting firms, new products, and new export markets, as well as the unit values of new versus incumbent products. The data suggest that few new firms survive the test of exporting -- more than 40 percent of firms exit export activities after one year -- and this firm turnover is associated with a steady deterioration of export unit values (prices). Furthermore, most new export products are associated with product switching by incumbent exporting firms. The typical new product introduced by incumbent firms tended to be priced at about 90 percent of the unit values of incumbent products. In contrast, the usual suspected obstacles to export growth, such as the inability of small firms to enter exporting activities or to grow their exports, appear to be important sources of export growth. In fact, the smallest exporting firms experienced the fastest growth in their export values. Some of these results are compared with those from other countries that have been examined in related literature.Economic Theory&Research,Markets and Market Access,Airports and Air Services,Microfinance,Tax Law

Micro Foundations of Price-Setting Behaviour: Evidence from Canadian Firms

How do firms adjust prices in the marketplace? Do they tend to adjust prices infrequently in response to changes in market conditions? If so, why? These remain key questions in macroeconomics, particularly for central banks that work to keep inflation low and stable. The authors use the Bank of Canada's 2002-03 price-setting survey data to investigate Canadian firms' price-setting behaviour; they also analyze the micro foundations for the firms' pricing behaviour using count data and probit models. The authors find that, all else being equal, firms tend to adjust prices more frequently if they are state-dependent price-setters, operate in the trade sector, or have large variable costs or more direct competitors. There are various sticky-price theories; in the Bank's price-setting survey, the senior management of firms were read a simple statement in non-technical language that paraphrased each sticky-price theory, and were then asked whether the statement applied to their firm. The most frequently recognized sticky-price theories are customer relations, cost-based pricing, and coordination failure. The authors' analysis indicates that if firms recognize coordination failure on price increases, sticky information, menu costs, factor stability, or customer relations as being important, they tend to adjust prices less frequently. The authors also find that the patterns discernible within firms' recognition of stickyprice theories are strongly associated with firms' micro foundations.Inflation and prices; Transmission of monetary policy

Bounding Selmer groups for the Rankin--Selberg convolution of Coleman families

Let $f$ and $g$ be two cuspidal modular forms and let $\mathcal{F}$ be a Coleman family passing through $f$, defined over an open affinoid subdomain $V$ of weight space $\mathcal{W}$. Using ideas of Pottharst, under certain hypotheses on $f$ and $g$ we construct a coherent sheaf over $V \times \mathcal{W}$ which interpolates the Bloch-Kato Selmer group of the Rankin-Selberg convolution of two modular forms in the critical range (i.e. the range where the $p$-adic $L$-function $L_p$ interpolates critical values of the global $L$-function). We show that the support of this sheaf is contained in the vanishing locus of $L_p$.Comment: Final version. To appear in Canadian Jour. Mat