Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Jan I. Haaland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper derives optimal trade and domestic taxes for a small open economy containing a monopolistically competitive (MC) sector in which firms may have heterogeneous productivity levels. Domestic protection brings gains from expanding the number of product varieties on offer, but these gains (and the corresponding rates of domestic subsidy or of import tariffs) are reduced by heterogeneity of foreign exporters who may withdraw from the market. Our analysis encompasses special cases in which the domestic MC sector can expand or contract flexibly, or is of fixed size. In the latter case gains from protection arise from terms of trade effects and, since various margins of substitution are switched off, only the relative values of domestic taxes, import tariffs and export taxes matter

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Jan I. Haaland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper derives optimal trade and domestic taxes for a small open economy containing a monopolistically competitive (MC) sector in which firms may have heterogeneous productivity levels. Domestic protection brings gains from expanding the number of product varieties on offer, but these gains (and the corresponding rates of domestic subsidy or of import tariffs) are reduced by heterogeneity of foreign exporters who may withdraw from the market. Our analysis encompasses special cases in which the domestic MC sector can expand or contract flexibly, or is of fixed size. In the latter case gains from protection arise from terms of trade effects and, since various margins of substitution are switched off, only the relative values of domestic taxes, import tariffs and export taxes matter

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Jan I. Haaland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description
This paper derives optimal trade and domestic taxes for a small open economy containing a monopolistically competitive (MC) sector in which firms may have heterogeneous productivity levels. Domestic protection brings gains from expanding the number of product varieties on offer, but these gains (and the corresponding rates of domestic subsidy or of import tariffs) are reduced by heterogeneity of foreign exporters who may withdraw from the market. Our analysis encompasses special cases in which the domestic MC sector can expand or contract flexibly, or is of fixed size. In the latter case gains from protection arise from terms of trade effects and, since various margins of substitution are switched off, only the relative values of domestic taxes, import tariffs and export taxes matter.

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolistic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Micro to Macro

Micro to Macro PDF Author: Arnaud Costinot
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
The empirical observation that "large firms tend to export, whereas small firms do not" has transformed the way economists think about the determinants of international trade. Yet, it has had surprisingly little impact about how economists think about trade policy. In this paper, we characterize optimal trade policy in a generalized version of the trade model with monopolistic competition and firm-level heterogeneity developed by Melitz (2003). At the micro-level, we find that optimal import taxes discriminate against the most profitable foreign exporters, while optimal export taxes are uniform across domestic exporters. At the macro-level, we demonstrate that the selection of heterogeneous firms into exporting tends to create aggregate nonconvexities that dampen the incentives for terms-of-trade manipulation, and in turn, the overall level of trade protection.

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolisitic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms

Optimal Trade Policy with Monopolisitic Competition and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Anthony J. Venables
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ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms

Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Andrew B. Bernard
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Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This paper examines how country, industry and firm characteristics interact in general equilibrium to determine nations' responses to trade liberalization. When firms possess heterogeneous productivity, countries differ in relative factor abundance and industries vary in factor intensity, falling trade costs induce reallocations of resources both within and across industries and countries. These reallocations generate substantial job turnover in all sectors, spur relatively more creative destruction in comparative advantage industries than comparative disadvantage industries, and magnify ex ante comparative advantage to create additional welfare gains from trade. The relative ascendance of high-productivity firms within industries boosts aggregate productivity and drives down consumer prices. In contrast with the neoclassical model, these price declines dampen and can even reverse the real wage losses of scarce factors as countries liberalize.

Falling Trade Costs, Heterogeneous Firms, and Industry Dynamics

Falling Trade Costs, Heterogeneous Firms, and Industry Dynamics PDF Author: Andrew B. Bernard
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commerce
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Book Description
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. Using disaggregated U.S. import data, we create a new measure of trade costs over time and industries. As the models predict, productivity growth is faster in industries with falling trade costs. We also find evidence supporting the major hypotheses of the heterogenous-firm models. Plants in industries with falling trade costs are more likely to die or become exporters. Existing exporters increase their shipments abroad. The results do not apply equally across all sectors but are strongest for industries most likely to be producing horizontally-differentiated tradeable goods.

Market Size, Trade, and Productivity

Market Size, Trade, and Productivity PDF Author: Marc J. Melitz
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial policy
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
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.

Trade Policy with Firm Heterogeneity, Variable Markups, and Foreign Direct Investment

Trade Policy with Firm Heterogeneity, Variable Markups, and Foreign Direct Investment PDF Author: Ziran Ding
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
The overarching theme of this dissertation is the analysis of trade policy implication in the presence of firm heterogeneity, variable markups, and multinational production. Chapter 1 surveys the main ingredients and results of heterogeneous firms trade policy literature that has been developing since the early 2000s. First, I present in great detail various stylized facts regarding firm heterogeneity, firm-level markups, and the global structure of multinational production. Second, I summarize the results of the recent development of theoretical approaches of modeling the firm-level markups. Third, I discuss the theoretical frameworks that incorporates multinational production into heterogeneous firms framework. Fourth, I review the trade policy literature that features firm heterogeneity, variable markups, and multinational production. Finally, I highlight the contribution of this dissertation and discuss directions for future research. Chapter 2 introduces ad valorem tariff and horizontal FDI into the Melitz and Ottaviano [2008] framework, producing the first framework in the trade policy literature that incor- porates firm heterogeneity, variable markups, and multinational production. The model generates novel equilibrium implications. First, the presence of multinational production generates a competitive effect on the economy, and firms need to be more productive to survive the competition. Second, the ad valorem tariff and quadratic quasi-linear preference collectively result in an endogenous level of firm entry. Therefore, the impact of trade/tariff liberalization depends on the equilibrium number of firms. In the short-run, when the firm entry is prohibited, an increase in import tariff shields the domestic economy from the For- eign competition, making it easier for firms to survive. This result is overturned when firms can enter the market freely in the long-run. In the long-run, an increase in Home's import tariff will make the Home country a more desirable environment to do business, attracting more entrants in the Home market, making the Home market more competitive. Firms need to be more productive to survive. Home0́9s tariff increase also makes it harder for the least productive Foreign exporters to survive, and triggers tariff-jumping FDI among the most productive exporters. Markups also respond to tariff change differently in the short-run vs. long-run, primarily due to the change of competitive environment associated with firm entry. Chapter 3 studies the welfare implication of tariff and optimal tariffs in an environment features firm heterogeneity, variable markups and FDI. The findings can be broadly sum- marized in three aspects. First, the quadratic quasi-linear preference generates multiple externalities in this economy, causing market outcome to differ from the socially optimum outcome systematically. Permitting FDI lowers the domestic cutoff levels and reduces the misallocation in the economy. Second, free trade is not always socially optimal. If the do- mestic cutoff is sufficiently high, an additional firm entry can improve social welfare. In this case, a positive import tariff is welfare-improving because it encourages firm entry. Third, both positively and normatively, the interaction of variable markup and FDI generates novel trade policy insights that are absent if consumers possess CES preference.

Optimal Trade Policy Under Homogeneous Bertrand Competition

Optimal Trade Policy Under Homogeneous Bertrand Competition PDF Author: Hong Hwang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In a seminal paper, Eaton and Grossman (1986) conclude that an export tax is optimal if firms produce heterogeneous products and engage in Bertrand price competition. In particular, they made a comment that could be interpreted to mean that even in the case of a homogeneous product, the optimal policy is still an export tax. This paper has re-examined the case and found that the optimal export policy can be an export subsidy, free trade, or an export tax, depending on the marginal cost differential between the domestic and the foreign firms. Moreover, if government intervention entails a cost, free trade becomes the only optimal policy.