IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/4568.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pricing to Firm: An Analysis of Firm- and Product-Level Import Prices

Author

Listed:
  • Halpern, László
  • Koren, Miklós

Abstract

We use Hungarian Customs data on product-level imports and exports of manufacturing firms to document that the import price of a particular product varies substantially across buying firms. Importantly, we can relate the level of import prices to firm characteristics such as size, foreign ownership and market power. We develop a theory of ‘pricing to firm’ (PTF), where markups depend on the technology and competitive environment of the buyer. The predictions of the model are confirmed by the data: import prices are higher for firms with greater market power, and for intermediate inputs with a high share in material costs. We take account of the endogeneity of the buyer's market power with respect to higher import prices. We show that even if unobserved cost heterogeneity within product categories is substantial, it is uncorrelated with our variables of interest. The magnitude of PTF is big: the standard deviation of price predicted by PTF is 21.5%.

Suggested Citation

  • Halpern, László & Koren, Miklós, 2004. "Pricing to Firm: An Analysis of Firm- and Product-Level Import Prices," CEPR Discussion Papers 4568, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP4568
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Maurice Kugler & Eric Verhoogen, 2012. "Prices, Plant Size, and Product Quality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 307-339.
    2. Fabrice Defever, 2011. "Incomplete Contracts and the Impact of Globalization on Consumer Welfare," CESifo Working Paper Series 3484, CESifo.
    3. Mallick, Sushanta & Marques, Helena, 2012. "Pricing to market with trade liberalization: The role of market heterogeneity and product differentiation in India’s exports," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 310-336.
    4. 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.
    5. Vandenbussche, Hylke & Viegelahn, Christian, 2018. "Input reallocation within multi-product firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 63-79.
    6. Maurice Kugler & Eric Verhoogen, 2008. "The Quality-Complementarity Hypothesis: Theory and New Evidence from Colombia," CID Working Papers 183, Center for International Development at Harvard University.
    7. Laszlo Halpern & Miklos Koren & Adam Szeidl, 2005. "Import and Productivity," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0509, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    8. Mallick, Sushanta & Marques, Helena, 2010. "Data frequency and exchange rate pass-through: Evidence from India's exports," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 13-22, January.
    9. Pradyut Kumar Pyne & Saikat Sinha Roy, 2009. "Exchange Rate Pass-Through in India an Exploration with Sectoral Import Prices," DEGIT Conference Papers c014_038, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Price discrimination; Import prices; pricing to firm;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business

    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:cpr:ceprdp:4568. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.