IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reecon/v63y2009i2p95-101.html

Product differentiation, firm heterogeneity and international trade: Exploring the Alchian-Allen effect

Author

Listed:
  • Echazu, Luciana

Abstract

In a model of international trade with horizontally differentiated goods, increasing returns and monopolistically competitive markets, this paper proposes that the degree of differentiation in a product mix-defined as the ratio of the number of varieties to the total value of imports-can be regarded as another aspect of quality. Furthermore, this paper draws a parallel to the Alchian-Allen effect and shows that, when firms are heterogeneous in either fixed or variable costs, the degree of differentiation is increasing in per unit transportation costs.

Suggested Citation

  • Echazu, Luciana, 2009. "Product differentiation, firm heterogeneity and international trade: Exploring the Alchian-Allen effect," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 95-101, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reecon:v:63:y:2009:i:2:p:95-101
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090-9443(08)00051-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krugman, Paul, 1980. "Scale Economies, Product Differentiation, and the Pattern of Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(5), pages 950-959, December.
    2. Feenstra, Robert C, 1994. "New Product Varieties and the Measurement of International Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(1), pages 157-177, March.
    3. Richard Baldwin & James Harrigan, 2011. "Zeros, Quality, and Space: Trade Theory and Trade Evidence," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 60-88, May.
    4. Robert C. Feenstra, 1988. "Quality Change Under Trade Restraints in Japanese Autos," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 103(1), pages 131-146.
    5. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    6. Demidova, Svetlana & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2009. "Trade policy under firm-level heterogeneity in a small economy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(1), pages 100-112, June.
    7. Costas Arkolakis & Svetlana Demidova & Peter J. Klenow & Andres Rodriguez-Clare, 2008. "Endogenous Variety and the Gains from Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 444-450, May.
    8. Krugman, Paul R., 1979. "Increasing returns, monopolistic competition, and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 469-479, November.
    9. Lucia Foster & John C. Haltiwanger & C. J. Krizan, 2001. "Aggregate Productivity Growth: Lessons from Microeconomic Evidence," NBER Chapters, in: New Developments in Productivity Analysis, pages 303-372, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Richard Frensch, 2008. "Trade liberalisation, adoption costs, and import margins in CEEC and OECD trade," Working Papers 269, Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
    11. Catia Montagna, 2001. "Efficiency Gaps, Love of Variety and International Trade," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 68(269), pages 27-44, February.
    12. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1707-1721, September.
    13. Yeaple, Stephen Ross, 2005. "A simple model of firm heterogeneity, international trade, and wages," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 1-20, January.
    14. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:6:y:2005:i:8:p:1-10 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Schmitt, Nicolas & Yu, Zhihao, 2001. "Economies of scale and the volume of intra-industry trade," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 127-132, December.
    16. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/6apm7lruv088iagm4rv2c33jtg is not listed on IDEAS
    17. David Hummels & Alexandre Skiba, 2004. "Shipping the Good Apples Out? An Empirical Confirmation of the Alchian-Allen Conjecture," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(6), pages 1384-1402, December.
    18. Timothy J. Kehoe & Kim J. Ruhl, 2013. "How Important Is the New Goods Margin in International Trade?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(2), pages 358-392.
    19. Tibor Besedes & Thomas J. Prusa, 2003. "On the Duration of Trade," NBER Working Papers 9936, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    21. Svetlana Demidova, 2008. "Productivity Improvements And Falling Trade Costs: Boon Or Bane?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(4), pages 1437-1462, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carter, Colin A. & Chalfant, James A. & Yavapolkul, Navin & Carroll, Christine L., 2016. "International commodity trade, transport costs, and product differentiation," Journal of Commodity Markets, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 65-76.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Melitz, Marc J. & Redding, Stephen J., 2014. "Heterogeneous Firms and Trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 1-54, Elsevier.
    2. Raphael Auer, 2009. "Product Heterogeneity, Within-Industry Trade Patterns, and the Home Bias of Consumption?," Working Papers 09.05, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    3. Costinot, Arnaud & Rodríguez-Clare, Andrés, 2014. "Trade Theory with Numbers: Quantifying the Consequences of Globalization," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 197-261, Elsevier.
    4. Raphael A. Auer, 2013. "Product Heterogeneity, Cross-Country Taste Differences, and the Consumption Home Bias," Working Papers 13.01, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
    5. Peter McQuade, 2010. "The Evolution of International Trade on the Extensive and Intensive Margins," The Institute for International Integration Studies Discussion Paper Series iiisdp325, IIIS, revised Apr 2010.
    6. Ana Cecília Fieler & Jonathan Eaton, 2025. "The Margins of Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 93(1), pages 129-160, January.
    7. Rubini, Loris, 2009. "Innovation and the Elasticity of Trade Volumes to Tariff Reductions," MPRA Paper 21484, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Ardelean, Adina & Lugovskyy, Volodymyr, 2010. "Domestic productivity and variety gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 280-291, March.
    9. Stefano Bolatto & Massimo Sbracia, 2016. "Deconstructing the Gains from Trade: Selection of Industries vs Reallocation of Workers," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(2), pages 344-363, May.
    10. Türkcan, Kemal, 2014. "Exports Margins in Austria’s Export Growth," MPRA Paper 53085, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Hallak, Juan Carlos & Sivadasan, Jagadeesh, 2008. "Productivity, quality and exporting behavior under minimum quality constraints," MPRA Paper 24146, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Jørgensen, Jan G. & Schröder, Philipp J.H., 2008. "Fixed export cost heterogeneity, trade and welfare," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(7), pages 1256-1274, October.
    13. Christian Hepenstrick & Alexander Tarasov, 2015. "Per capita income and the extensive margin of bilateral trade," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1561-1599, November.
    14. D’Artis Kancs, 2010. "Structural Estimation of Variety Gains from Trade Integration in Asia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 43(3), pages 270-288, September.
    15. Haaland, Jan I. & Venables, Anthony J., 2016. "Optimal trade policy with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 85-95.
    16. Johannes Van Biesebroeck & Yingting Yi & Elena Zaurino, 2022. "Trade liberalisation and the extensive margin of differentiated goods: Evidence from China," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(9), pages 2724-2747, September.
    17. Stefano Bolatto, "undated". "Trade across Countries and Manufacturing Sectors with Heterogeneous Trade Elasticities," Development Working Papers 360, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    18. Egger, Peter H. & Huang, Ruobing, 2025. "Market versus optimum allocation in open economies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 228(C).
    19. Jan Jørgensen & Philipp Schröder & Zhihao Yu, 2012. "Globalization beyond partitioning: back to Krugman’s world," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 148(1), pages 73-87, April.
    20. Wim Naudé & Martin Cameron, 2021. "Export-Led Growth after COVID-19: The Case of Portugal," Notas Económicas, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, issue 52, pages 7-53, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:reecon:v:63:y:2009:i:2:p:95-101. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.