European Business Schools Librarian's Group

ESSEC Working Papers,
ESSEC Research Center, ESSEC Business School

No DR 09001: The selection effect of two-way trade in the Melitz model: an alternative approach

Jacques Potin ()
Additional contact information
Jacques Potin: ESSEC Business School, Postal: Avenue Bernard Hirsch - B.P. 50105, 95021 CERGY-PONTOISE Cedex , FRANCE, ,

Abstract: This paper studies the influential Melitz model of trade with heterogeneous firms using an alternative, intuitive approach. Contrary to what is often argued, it is an increase in product market competition that drives the bad firms out: with two-way trade, entry by foreign firms is not compensated by a “sufficient” reduction in the mass of surviving firms. To illustrate this, we decompose the total effect of trade in two partial effects: a domestic-profit-reducing effect due to foreign market penetration by the most productive firms; an average-profit-reducing effect due to the payment of the fixed export costs. We also provide the new prediction that trade generally leads to (weakly) less entry in the industry. This clarifies key interpretation issues in a prolific literature.

Keywords: Firm Heterogeneity; Intra-industry Trade; Selection

JEL-codes: F10; F12

16 pages, April 2009

Full text files

showDeclFileRes.do?declId=8409&key=__workpaper__ PDF-file 

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Sophie Magnanou ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:ebg:essewp:dr-09001This page generated on 2024-10-19 15:41:33.