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Multi-product Firms in International Economics

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  • Michael Irlacher

Abstract

A striking pattern in transaction-level data is the concentration of international shipments in the hands of a few large firms. One common feature of dominating high-performance firms is that they produce multiple products and ship them to many destinations. Motivated by the emergence of highly detailed data at the firm-product-destination level, a series of theoretical and empirical papers studies the role of multi-product firms (MPFs) in international trade. This survey reviews the evidence on the importance of MPFs in international markets and highlights the key theoretical as well as empirical results that the literature has produced in the last decade.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Irlacher, 2022. "Multi-product Firms in International Economics," Economics working papers 2022-01, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    • Handle: RePEc:jku:econwp:2022-01
    Note: English
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Survey; Multi-product firms; International Economics; Theory; Empirics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

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