Learning and the Value of Relationships in International Trade

Ryan Monarch and Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: How valuable are long-term supplier relationships? To address this question, this paper explores relationships between U.S. importers and their suppliers abroad. We establish several facts: almost half of U.S. imports involve relationships three years or older, relationship survival and traded quantity increase as a relationship ages, and long-term relationships were more resilient in the 2008-09 financial crisis. We present a model of importer learning and calibrate it using our data. We estimate large differences in the value of relationships across countries. Counterfactuals show that relationships are central to trade dynamics.

Keywords: International Trade; Firm Relationships; Learning; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 F11 F14 L14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 55 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2016/CES-WP-16-11.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Learning and the Value of Relationships in International Trade (2016)
Working Paper: Learning and the Value of Relationships in International Trade (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:16-11

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dawn Anderson ().