IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jku/econwp/2008_11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Heterogeneous Firms, the Structure of Industry & Trade under Oligopoly

Author

Listed:
  • Eddy Bekkers
  • Joseph Francis Francois

Abstract

We develop a model with endogeneity in key features of industrial structure linked to heterogeneous cost structures under Cournot competition. We use the model to explore issues related to cross-country differences in industry structure and the impact of globalization on markups and pricing, concentration, and productivity. The model nests two workhorse trade models, the Brander & Krugman reciprocal dumping model and the Ricardian technology-based trade model, as special cases. We examine both free entry and limited entry (free exit) cases. The model generates clear testable predictions on the probability of zero trade flows and the pattern of export prices, and on cross-country and industry variations in industrial structure controlling for openness. Market prices decline as a result of trade liberalization, the least productive firms get squeezed out of the market, exporting firms gain market share, and more firms become trade oriented. In addition, depending on the strength of underlying cost heterogeneity, falling prices are consistent with both increasing and falling industry concentration following episodes of integration. Welfare rises with trade liberalization, unless trade costs decline from a prohibitive level in the short run free exit case. Variation across industries and markets in markups, concentration, and pricing structures is otherwise a function of market size and the variation in cost heterogeneity across industries.

Suggested Citation

  • Eddy Bekkers & Joseph Francis Francois, 2008. "Heterogeneous Firms, the Structure of Industry & Trade under Oligopoly," Economics working papers 2008-11, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
  • Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2008_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2008/wp0811.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brander, James & Krugman, Paul, 1983. "A 'reciprocal dumping' model of international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(3-4), pages 313-321, November.
    2. Fabio Ghironi & Marc J. Melitz, 2005. "International Trade and Macroeconomic Dynamics with Heterogeneous Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 865-915.
    3. Marc J. Melitz & Giancarlo I. P. Ottaviano, 2021. "Market Size, Trade, and Productivity," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 4, pages 87-108, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. 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.
    5. Richard Baldwin & Daria Taglioni, 2006. "Gravity for Dummies and Dummies for Gravity Equations," NBER Working Papers 12516, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Andrew B. Bernard & Jonathan Eaton & J. Bradford Jensen & Samuel Kortum, 2003. "Plants and Productivity in International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1268-1290, September.
    7. Andrew B. Bernard, 2004. "Exporting and Productivity in the USA," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 20(3), pages 343-357, Autumn.
    8. 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.
    9. James R. Tybout, 2001. "Plant- and Firm-Level Evidence on "New" Trade Theories," NBER Working Papers 8418, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Francois, Joseph & Manchin, Miriam & Martin, Will, 2013. "Market Structure in Multisector General Equilibrium Models of Open Economies," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 1571-1600, Elsevier.
    2. di Giovanni, Julian & Levchenko, Andrei A., 2013. "Firm entry, trade, and welfare in Zipf's world," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 283-296.
    3. Colacicco, Rudy, 2012. "The "Average" Within-Sector Firm Heterogeneity in General Oligopolistic Equilibrium," MPRA Paper 40212, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Francois, Joseph & Bekkers, Eddy, 2008. "Heterogeneous Firms, the Structure of Industry, and Trade under Oligopoly," CEPR Discussion Papers 6956, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Bekkers, Eddy & Francois, Joseph, 2013. "Trade and industrial structure with large firms and heterogeneity," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 69-90.
    3. José Antonio Rodríguez-López, 2011. "Prices and Exchange Rates: A Theory of Disconnect," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(3), pages 1135-1177.
    4. Costas Arkolakis, 2010. "Market Penetration Costs and the New Consumers Margin in International Trade," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(6), pages 1151-1199.
    5. 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.
    6. Federico J. Diez & Jesse Mora & Alan C. Spearot, 2016. "Firms in international trade," Working Papers 16-25, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    7. Federico Etro, 2012. "Endogenous Market Structures and International Trade. II: Optimal Trade Policy," Working Papers 2012:32, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    8. Breinlich, Holger, 2008. "Trade liberalization and industrial restructuring through mergers and acquisitions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 254-266, December.
    9. Head, Keith & Mayer, Thierry, 2014. "Gravity Equations: Workhorse,Toolkit, and Cookbook," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 131-195, Elsevier.
    10. Bloom, Nick & Manova, Kalina & Teng Sun, Stephen & Van Reenen, John & Yu, Zhihong, 2018. "Managing trade: evidence from China and the US," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88703, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    11. Aleksandra Parteka & Joanna Wolszczak-Derlacz, 2013. "The Impact of Trade Integration with the European Union on Productivity in a Posttransition Economy: The Case of Polish Manufacturing Sectors," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 84-104, March.
    12. Nicolas Berman & Philippe Martin & Thierry Mayer, 2009. "How do Different Exporters React to Exchange Rate Changes? Theory, Empirics and Aggregate Implications," Working Papers 2009-32, CEPII research center.
    13. Evgeny Zhelobodko & Sergey Kokovin & Mathieu Parenti & Jacques-François Thisse, 2011. "Monopolistic competition in general equilibrium: Beyond the CES," PSE Working Papers halshs-00566431, HAL.
    14. 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.
    15. Koenig, Pamina & Mayneris, Florian & Poncet, Sandra, 2010. "Local export spillovers in France," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 622-641, May.
    16. Picard, Pierre M. & Okubo, Toshihiro, 2012. "Firms' locations under demand heterogeneity," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 961-974.
    17. 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.
    18. Flora Bellone & Patrick Musso & Lionel Nesta & Michel Quere, 2008. "The U-Shaped Productivity Dynamics of French Exporters," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 144(4), pages 636-659, December.
    19. Roc Armenter & Miklós Koren, 2015. "Economies Of Scale And The Size Of Exporters," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 482-511, June.
    20. Andrew B. Bernard & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2007. "Comparative Advantage and Heterogeneous Firms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 31-66.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Firm heterogeneity; Cournot competition; Composition effects of trade liberalization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:jku:econwp:2008_11. 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: René Böheim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlinzat.html .

    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.