 A Balls-and-Bins Model of TradeNo 7783, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: A number of stylized facts have been documented about the extensive margin of trade - which firms export, and how many products they send to how many destinations. We argue that the sparse nature of trade data is crucial to understanding these stylized facts. Typically the number of observations - that is, total shipments - is low relative to the number of possible classifications - e.g., countries and product codes. We propose a statistical model to account for the sparsity of trade data. We formalize the assignment of shipments to categories as balls falling into bins. The balls-and-bins model quantitatively reproduces the prevalence of zero product-level trade flows across export destinations. The model also accounts for firm-level facts: as in the data, most firms export a single product to a single country but these firms represent a tiny fraction of total exports. In contrast, the balls-and-bins model cannot reproduce the small fraction of exporters among U.S. firms. We discuss the implications for identifying the relevant model of the extensive margin in trade. Keywords: International trade; Extensive margin; Sparse trade (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7783 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK. |
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