Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/46265 
Year of Publication: 
2010
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 3309
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
Abstract: 
We use a panel of Brazilian exporters, their products, and destination markets to document a set of regularities for multi-product exporters: (i) few top-selling products account for the bulk of a firm's exports in a market, (ii) the distribution of exporter scope (the number of products per firm in a market) is similar across markets, and (iii) within each market, exporter scope is positively associated with average sales per product. Our data also show that firms systematically export their highest-sales products across multiple destinations. To account for these regularities, we develop a model of firm-product heterogeneity with entry costs that depend on exporter scope. Estimating this model for the within-firm sales distribution we identify the nature and components of product entry costs. We find that firms face a strong decline in product sales with scope but also that market-specific entry costs drop fast. Counterfactual experiments with globally falling entry costs indicate that a large share of the simulated increase in trade is attributable to declines in the firm's entry cost for the first product.
Subjects: 
international trade
heterogeneous firms
multi-product firms
firm and product panel data
Brazil
JEL: 
F12
L11
F14
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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