IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/restat/v104y2022i5p909-928.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

"It's Not You, It's Me": Prices, Quality, and Switching in U.S.-China Trade Relationships

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan Monarch

Abstract

Costs from switching suppliers can affect prices by discouraging buyer movements from high- to low-cost sellers. This paper uses confidential data on U.S. importers and their Chinese exporters to investigate these costs. I find barriers to supplier adjustments: nearly half of importers keep their partner over time. Importers switch less if their supplier offers higher quality or provides lower prices. I propose and structurally estimate a dynamic discrete choice model to compute switching costs. Cost estimates are large, heterogeneous across products, and matter for trade prices: halving switching costs reduces the U.S.-China Import Price Index by 7.6%.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan Monarch, 2022. ""It's Not You, It's Me": Prices, Quality, and Switching in U.S.-China Trade Relationships," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 104(5), pages 909-928, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:104:y:2022:i:5:p:909-928
    DOI: 10.1162/rest_a_01015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01015
    Download Restriction: Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1162/rest_a_01015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Kossi Messanh Agbekponou & Ilaria Fusacchia, 2024. "Positioning and bargaining power in agri-food global value chains," Post-Print hal-04666067, HAL.
    2. Kossi Messanh Agbekponou & Ilaria Fusacchia, 2024. "Positioning and bargaining power in agri-food global value chains," Post-Print hal-04666053, HAL.
    3. Kossi Messanh Agbekponou & Ilaria Fusacchia, 2023. "Global value chains' position and value capture: Firm evidence in agri-food industry," Post-Print hal-04321612, HAL.
    4. Kossi Messanh Agbekponou & Ilaria Fusacchia, 2023. "Global value chains' position and value capture: Firm evidence in agri-food industry," Post-Print hal-04321670, HAL.

    More about this item

    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:tpr:restat:v:104:y:2022:i:5:p:909-928. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    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.