Export Variety and Country Productivity : Estimating the Monopolistic Competition Model with Endogenous Productivity

• Tác giả: Robert Feenstra
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 385.1 Economic aspects of production
• Thông tin xuất bản: 2012
• Bộ sưu tập: Tài liệu truy cập mở
• ID: 298135
• Chủ đề: 1. Country and Industry Studies of Trade F140; 2. Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies F120

Tóm tắt

This paper provides evidence on the monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms and endogenous productivity. We show that this model has a well-defined GDP function where relative export variety enters positively, and estimate this function over 48 countries from 1980 to 2000. Average export variety to the United States increases by 3.3% per year, so it nearly doubles over these two decades. The total increase in export variety is associated with a 3.3% average productivity improvement for exporters over the two decades. Overall, the model can explain 31% of the within-country variation in productivity (or 52% for the OECD countries), but only a very small fraction of the between-country variation in productivity.