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Gravity with History: On Incumbency Effects in International Trade

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Egger
  • Reto Foellmi
  • Ulrich Schetter

    (Center for International Development at Harvard University)

  • David Torun

Abstract

We introduce incumbency effects into a tractable dynamic model of international trade. The framework nests the canonical Melitz (2003)-Chaney (2008) model as a special case. The key novelty is that fixed costs of market access decrease with tenure. As a consequence, there is less market exit and entry in response to a shock. We derive a gravity equation and show that, ceteris paribus, countries that liberalized their trade relationship earlier trade more today. We provide supporting evidence for the underlying mechanism and derive an augmented ACR formula (Arkolakis et al., 2012) for the gains from trade that accounts for incumbency effects. A quantitative analysis suggests that our mechanism can explain up to 25% of countries’ home shares and that the gains from trade are, on average, 10% larger when accounting for incumbency effects. The analysis further reveals novel distributional effects of trade that benefit real wages but reduce profits.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Egger & Reto Foellmi & Ulrich Schetter & David Torun, 2023. "Gravity with History: On Incumbency Effects in International Trade," Growth Lab Working Papers 219, Harvard's Growth Lab.
    • Handle: RePEc:glh:wpfacu:219
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    File URL: https://growthlab.hks.harvard.edu/sites/projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/growthlab/files/2023-07-cid-fellows-wp-153-incumbency-effects.pdf
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    Cited by:

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    2. Esteban Jaimovich & Boryana Madzharova & Vincenzo Merella, 2024. "Spreading the Good Apples Out: Market Entry Dynamics of Quality-Differentiated Products," CESifo Working Paper Series 11529, CESifo.
    3. Rodolfo G. Campos & Benedikt Heid & Jacopo Timini, 2024. "The economic consequences of geopolitical fragmentation: Evidence from the Cold War," Papers 2404.03508, arXiv.org.
    4. Schetter, Ulrich, 2024. "Quality differentiation, comparative advantage, and international specialization across products," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    5. Schetter, Ulrich & Schneider, Maik T. & Jäggi, Adrian, 2024. "Inequality, openness, and growth through creative destruction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 222(C).
    6. Ridwan Ah Sheikh & Sunil Kanwar, 2024. "Revisiting the Impact of TRIPS on IPR-intensive Export Flows: Evidence from Staggered Difference-in-Differences," Working papers 351, Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
    7. Foellmi, Reto & Hepenstrick, Christian & Torun, David, 2024. "Triangle inequalities in international trade: The neglected dimension," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 152(C).
    8. Nicolás de Roux & Luis R. Martínez & Camilo Tovar & Jorge Tovar, 2025. "Trade Collapse and the Performance of Exporting Firms," Documentos CEDE 2025-34, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F17 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Forecasting and Simulation

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