IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v116y2012i3p487-490.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Firm level export decisions: The role of information cost

Author

Listed:
  • Wei, Xuan
  • Thornsbury, Suzanne

Abstract

Costs necessary to conform with rules and regulations governing market access (i.e. compliance costs) are uncertain prior to export or collection of information which is not cost free for an individual firm. In this paper, we extend the heterogeneous firm model of Melitz to analyze how an individual firm may reduce or eliminate the uncertainty of compliance costs by paying for the information cost prior to making decisions to export. Our model indicates that in the presence of uncertain compliance costs and non-zero information cost, average profits and productivity differences between exporting and non-exporting firms are reduced.

Suggested Citation

  • Wei, Xuan & Thornsbury, Suzanne, 2012. "Firm level export decisions: The role of information cost," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 116(3), pages 487-490.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:116:y:2012:i:3:p:487-490
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2012.04.056
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176512001978
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2012.04.056?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James E. Anderson & Eric van Wincoop, 2004. "Trade Costs," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(3), pages 691-751, September.
    2. Thornsbury, Suzanne & Roberts, Donna & Orden, David, 2004. "Measurement and Political Economy of Disputed Technical Regulations," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(3), pages 559-574, December.
    3. 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.
    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. Bellalah, Mondher & Bradford, Marc & Zhang, Detao, 2016. "A general theory of corporate international investment under incomplete information, short sales and taxes," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 615-626.
    2. Xuan Wei & Suzanne Thornsbury & David Schweikhardt, 2017. "Hurdles to Exporting: A Decomposition of Fixed Export Costs," Review of Economics & Finance, Better Advances Press, Canada, vol. 7, pages 1-18, February.
    3. Yifei Mu & Zhen Chen & Yibing Ding & Yuqing Wang & Bo Pang, 2020. "How the Internet Promotes China's Exports: A Firm‐level Perspective," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 28(5), pages 118-142, September.

    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. Wei, Xuan & Thornsbury, Suzanne, 2011. "Information Cost As A Prior Hurdle to Exporting," 2011 Annual Meeting, July 24-26, 2011, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 103622, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    2. Charlotte Emlinger & Viola Lamani, 2020. "International trade, quality sorting and trade costs: the case of Cognac," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 156(3), pages 579-609, August.
    3. Joseph Francois & Bernard Hoekman, 2010. "Services Trade and Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 642-692, September.
    4. Behar, Alberto & Edwards, Lawrence, 2011. "How integrated is SADC ? trends in intra-regional and extra-regional trade flows and policy," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5625, The World Bank.
    5. Dutt, Pushan & Mihov, Ilian & Van Zandt, Timothy, 2013. "The effect of WTO on the extensive and the intensive margins of trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 204-219.
    6. Chen, Natalie & Novy, Dennis, 2008. "International Trade Integration: A Disaggregated Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 7103, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Pierpaolo Andriani & Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, 2015. "Transactional innovation as performative action: transforming comparative advantage in the global coffee business," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 371-400, April.
    8. Gaubert, Cecile & Itskhoki, Oleg & Vogler, Maximilian, 2021. "Government policies in a granular global economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 95-112.
    9. Martina Lawless, 2010. "Deconstructing gravity: trade costs and extensive and intensive margins," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(4), pages 1149-1172, November.
    10. Peter Broer & Jürgen Antony, 2010. "Linkages between the Financial and the Real Sector of the Economy: A Literature Survey," CPB Document 216.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    11. Cletus C. Coughlin & Dennis Novy, 2013. "Is the International Border Effect Larger than the Domestic Border Effect? Evidence from US Trade," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 59(2), pages 249-276, June.
    12. Holger Breinlich & Alessandra Tucci, 2011. "Foreign market conditions and export performance: does ‘crowdedness’ reduce exports?," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 44(3), pages 991-1019, August.
    13. Salvador Gil-Pareja & Rafael Llorca & Josè A. Martinez-Serrano, 2011. "Is There A Continental Bias In Trade?," ERSA conference papers ersa10p792, European Regional Science Association.
    14. Kano, Kazuko & Kano, Takashi & Takechi, Kazutaka, 2013. "Exaggerated death of distance: Revisiting distance effects on regional price dispersions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 403-413.
    15. 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.
    16. Do, Quy-Toan & Levchenko, Andrei A., 2009. "Trade, inequality, and the political economy of institutions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1489-1520, July.
    17. Juyoung Cheong & Do Won Kwak & Kam Ki Tang, 2020. "Trade Elasticity: Estimates From Product-Level Data," Discussion Papers Series 616, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    18. Elhanan Helpman & Oleg Itskhoki & Stephen Redding, 2010. "Inequality and Unemployment in a Global Economy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 78(4), pages 1239-1283, July.
    19. Koenig, Pamina & Mayneris, Florian & Poncet, Sandra, 2010. "Local export spillovers in France," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 622-641, May.
    20. Yilmazkuday, Hakan, 2009. "Distribution of Consumption, Production and Trade within the U.S," MPRA Paper 16361, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Information cost; Uncertainty; Compliance costs; Export decisions; Profit; Productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General

    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:ecolet:v:116:y:2012:i:3:p:487-490. 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/ecolet .

    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.