High-end variety exporters defying gravity: Micro facts and aggregate implications

We develop a new methodology to identify high-end variety exporters in French firm-level data. We find that they do not export to more countries, but they export to more distant destinations than low-end ones. We also show that in contrast to low-end exporters, distance has almost no effect on high-end variety export(er)s. Because of this lower sensitivity to distance at the micro-level, specializing in the production of high-end varieties has implications for the geography of aggregate exports. Specializing in high-end varieties allows for a greater geographic diversification of aggregate exports – in particular when demand arises from both neighboring and distant countries. It also makes a country better able to benefit from growth in remote destinations.