Trade, Economic Geography and the Choice of Product Quality

Pierre Picard

DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg

Abstract: The present paper studies the effect of the choice of product quality on trade and location of firms. We build a quality-augmented model where consumers have preferences for the quality of a set of differentiated varieties. Firms do not only develop and sell manufacturing varieties in a monopolistic competitive market but also determine the quality level of their varieties by investing in research and de- velopment. We explore the price and quality equilibrium properties when firms are immobile. We then consider a footloose capital model where capital is allocated to the manufacturing firms in the region offering the highest return. We show that the larger region produces varieties of higher quality and that the quality gap increases with larger asymmetries in region sizes and with larger trade costs. Finally, the home market effect is mitigated when firms choose their product quality.

Keywords: Monopolistic Competition; Endogenous Quality; Economic Geography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-ure
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http://wwwfr.uni.lu/content/download/57175/676717/ ... roduct%20Quality.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Trade, economic geography and the choice of product quality (2015)
Working Paper: Trade, economic geography and the choice of product quality (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:luc:wpaper:12-11

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