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Capital adjustment costs : implications for domestic and export sales dynamics

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  • Liu, Yanping

Abstract

Theoretical and empirical work on export dynamics has generally assumed constant marginal production cost and therefore ignored domestic product market conditions. However, recent studies have documented a negative contemporaneous correlation between firms´domestic and export sales growth, suggesting that firms can be capacity constrained in the short run and face increasing marginal production cost. This paper develops and estimates a dynamic model of export behavior incorporating short-term capacity constraints and endogenous capital investment. Consistent with the empirical evidence, the model features firms´sales substitutions across markets in the short term, and generates time-varying transition paths of firm responses through firms´ capital adjustments over time. The model is fit to a panel of plant-level data for Colombian manufacturing industries and used to simulate how firm-responses transition following an exchange-rate devaluation. The results indicate that incorporating capital adjustment costs is quantitatively important. First, it takes more than five years for firms to fully adjust to a permanent change of the exchange-rate process. Second, the long-run exchange rate elasticity of exports is substantially higher than that in the short run. Firms´expectation on the permanence of the policy changes also matters. The failure to accurately anticipate the duration of the devaluation results in reduction in firms`profits due to over- or under-investment in capital.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Yanping, 2018. "Capital adjustment costs : implications for domestic and export sales dynamics," Working Papers 18-04, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:mnh:wpaper:44696
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    3. Gaelan MacKenzie, 2021. "Trade and Market Power in Product and Labor Markets," Staff Working Papers 21-17, Bank of Canada.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    International trade ; heterogeneous firms ; capacity constraints ; capital adjustment costs ; firm dynamics ; firm panel data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

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