Trade, finance and endogenous firm heterogeneity

Alessandra Bonfiglioli (), Rosario Crino () and Gino Gancia

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: We study how financial frictions affect firm-level heterogeneity and trade. We build a model in which productivity differences across monopolistically competitive firms are endogenous and depend on investment decisions at the entry stage. By increasing entry costs, financial frictions lower the exit cutoff and hence the value of investing in bigger projects with more dispersed outcomes. As a result, financial frictions make firms smaller and more homogeneous, and hinder the volume of exports. Export opportunities, instead, shift expected profits to the tail and increase the value of technological heterogeneity. We test these predictions using comparable measures of sales dispersion within 365 manufacturing industries in 119 countries, built from highly disaggregated US import data. Consistent with the model, financial development in- creases sales dispersion, especially in more financially vulnerable industries; sales dispersion is also increasing in measures of comparative advantage. These results help explaining the effect of financial development and factor endowments on export sales.

Keywords: Financial development; firm heterogeneity; international trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-12, Revised 2017-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-int, nep-mac and nep-ppm
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Related works:
Journal Article: Trade, Finance, and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity (2019)
Working Paper: Trade, Finance and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity (2016)
Working Paper: Trade, Finance and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity (2016)
Working Paper: Trade, Finance and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity (2016)
Working Paper: Trade, Finance and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1502

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