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Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters

Author

Listed:
  • Thierry Mayer
  • Marc Melitz
  • Gianmarco Ottaviano

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Thierry Mayer & Marc Melitz & Gianmarco Ottaviano, 2011. "Market Size, Competition, and the Product Mix of Exporters," Working Papers 2011-11, CEPII research center.
    • Handle: RePEc:cii:cepidt:2011-11
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Product mix; Competition; Markups; Multi-product firms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation

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