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Discussion Paper Details

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Title: Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters

Author(s): Thierry Mayer, Marc J Melitz and Gianmarco Ottaviano

Publication Date: April 2011

Keyword(s): Competition, Markups, Multi-product firms and Product Mix

Programme Area(s): International Trade and Regional Economics

Abstract: We build a theoretical model of multi-product firms that highlights how market size and geography (the market sizes of and bilateral economic distances to trading partners) affect both a firm's exported product range and its exported product mix across market destinations (the distribution of sales across products for a given product range). We show how tougher competition in an export market induces a firm to skew its export sales towards its best performing products. We find very strong confirmation of this competitive effect for French exporters across export market destinations. Trade models based on exogenous markups cannot explain this strong significant link between destination market characteristics and the within-firm skewness of export sales (after controlling for bilateral trade costs). Theoretically, this within firm change in product mix driven by the trading environment has important repercussions on firm productivity and how it responds to changes in that trading environment.

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Bibliographic Reference

Mayer, T, Melitz, M and Ottaviano, G. 2011. 'Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters'. London, Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=8349