Plants and Productivity in International Trade

Andrew Bernard, Jonathan Eaton, J. Bradford Jenson and Samuel Kortum
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: J. Bradford Jensen ()

No 7688, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We reconcile international trade theory with findings of enormous plant-level heterogeneity in exporting and productivity. Our model extends basic Ricardian theory to accommodate many countries, geographic barriers, and imperfect competition. Fitting the model to bilateral trade among the United States and its 46 major trade partners, we see how well it can explain basic facts about U.S. plants: (i) productivity dispersion, (ii) the productivity advantage of exporters, (iii) the small fraction who export, (iv) the small fraction of revenues from exporting among those that do, and (v) the much larger size of exporters. We pick up all these basic qualitative features, and go quite far in matching them quantitatively. We examine counterfactuals to assess the impact of various global shifts on productivity, plant entry and exit, and labor turnover in U.S. manufacturing.

JEL-codes: F11 F17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eff and nep-ino
Note: IO ITI PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Published as Andrew B. Bernard & Jonathan Eaton & J. Bradford Jensen & Samuel Kortum, 2003. "Plants and Productivity in International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1268-1290, September.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7688.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Plants and Productivity in International Trade (2003)
Working Paper: Plants and productivity in international trade (2000)
Working Paper: Plants and Productivity in International Trade (2000)
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:nbr:nberwo:7688

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7688

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().