The Value of Reputation in Trade: Evidence from Alibaba

Maggie Chen and Min Wu ()
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Min Wu: George Washington University

Working Papers from The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy

Abstract: Information frictions are prevalent in the matching of exporters and importers. In this paper, we examine the value of reputation in international trade by exploring T-shirt exports on the worldís leading trade platform, Alibaba. We Örst present four new stylized facts about the distribution of Alibaba exports: (1) exports are exceedingly concentrated in superstar exporters; (2) the distribution of price closely mirrors the distribution of exporter reputation while the distribution of export volume is far more dispersed; (3) the distribution of export revenue becomes more dispersed as exporters age; and (4) the market share of superstar exporters diminishes with the experience of importers. Exploiting qualitative and quantitative features of Alibabaís reputation measures and Russian 2014-2015 ruble crisis, we explain the stylized facts and investigate the heterogeneous trade responses to reputation across countries and during a negative income shock. A dynamic price and reputation model further suggests that exporters use dynamic prices to ináuence the rates of reputation di§usion and export growth. Structural estimation of the model shows that the rise in aggregate exports and export concentration due to reputation is equivalent to raising the mean and variance of exporter quality by 35 and 200 percent, respectively.

Keywords: reputation; information; superstar; and Alibaba (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://www.gwu.edu/~iiep/assets/docs/papers/2016WP/ChenIIEPWP2016-20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Value of Reputation in Trade: Evidence from Alibaba (2021)
Working Paper: The Value of Reputation in Trade: Evidence from Alibaba (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gwi:wpaper:2016-20

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