Specialization across goods and export quality

Alcalá, Francisco

Specialization across goods and export quality

UMUFAE Economics Working Papers from DIGITUM. Universidad de Murcia

Abstract: This paper explores the link between international specialization across goods and within goods along the quality dimension. The analysis is performed in a multi-country model with an integer number of efficiency heterogeneous firms producing each good and under reasonably general assumptions on the shape of firm efficiency distributions and market structure. In equilibrium, each country exports a range of qualities for each good that overlaps with the ranges of other countries following patterns that relate to differences in wages, trade frictions and absolute advantage. If firm efficiency is quality biased (i.e., the relative productivity of more efficient firms is higher when producing higher quality) then, conditional on wages, the average quality of the exports within an industry increases with the country's international specialization in that industry.

Keywords: comparative advantage; absolute advantage; quality; vertical differentiation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45
Date: 2014-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-int
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Specialization across goods and export quality (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mur:wpaper:38839

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