The Buyer Margins of Firms' Exports

Jeronimo Carballo, Gianmarco Ottaviano and Christian Volpe Martincus

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: We use detailed data on exporters from Costa Rica, Ecuador and Uruguay as well as on their buyers to show that aggregate exports are disproportionally driven by few multi-buyers exporters whose foreign sales of any product are in turn accounted for by few dominant buyers. We propose an analytically solvable multi-country model of endogenous selection in which dominant exporters, dominant products and dominant buyers emerge in parallel as multi-product sellers with heterogeneous technologies compete for buyers with heterogeneous needs. The model not only provides an explanation of the existence of dominant buyers but also makes specific predictions on how the relative importance of dominant buyers should vary across export destinations depending on their market size and accessibility. We show that these predictions are borne out by our data and discuss their welfare implications in terms of gains from trade.

Keywords: Firm heterogeneity; taste heterogeneity; import-export relations; competition; selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-com and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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https://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1234.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The buyer margins of firms' exports (2018)
Working Paper: The buyer margins of firms' exports (2018)
Working Paper: The buyer margins of firms' exports (2016)
Working Paper: The Buyer Margins of Firms' Exports (2013)
Working Paper: The buyer margins of firms' exports (2013)
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