Essays on International Trade and Industry Dynamics

Essays on International Trade and Industry Dynamics
Author: Bernardo Diaz De Astarloa
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2017
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation consists on three essays on international trade and industry dynamics. All three essays study empirical applications of open economy environments with heterogeneous firms who make decisions over time.The first essay studies trade policy and the dynamics of the solar photovoltaic manufacturing industry in the U.S. In it I develop a computable, continuous-time dynamic model of the industry where domestic firms engage in price competition against each other and an importing sector to sell solar panels to domestic consumers. Firms can attain cost reductions through learning by doing and R&D investments. I use the model to estimate its main parameters using firm-level survey data from the Department of Energy and then simulate the application of countervailing duties to imports of solar panels, analyzing the implications for the evolution of the industry and welfare. In a scenario where a 30% duty is applied to imports, domestic firms respond by increasing R&D expenditures, therefore increasing productivity and setting lower prices, even when concentration increases as high productivity domestic firms gain market share.The second essay is on the dynamics of the textiles and garments industry in Bangladesh. First, it shows that, in contrast to the standard description of entry into foreign markets, Bangladeshi exporters are fully committed to foreign markets, exporting most of their output abroad; they start big, not small, and show high survival rates once they start exporting. They are born to export firms who operate in orphan industries, with essentially missing domestic demand for their products. In addition to the usual fixed and sunk costs of exporting, they must face presumably higher costs of starting up new businesses. Then it compares these patterns with those of China, Colombia and Taiwan, and find similar but less-striking patterns for China. These features seem to be missing in Taiwan and Colombia, which accord with other typical cases described in the literature. Finally, it adapts a search and learning model of export dynamics to show how the presence of high sunk costs of establishing a new business and the absence of a domestic market can generate export trajectories similar to the ones we observe in Bangladesh. The third essay focuses on the links between productivity and exporting. The trade literature has identified three relationships. First, that productivity causes exporting, so that there is selection into exporting by more productive firms. Second, that exporting generates productivity growth through, for example, learning-by-exporting. Third, that firms make choices that make them more productive in preparation to export. The essay shows that patterns of Chinese exporters are consistent with all three hypotheses. Exporters are more productive than non-exporters, which is consistent with selection. For successful exporters, most of the productivity growth during the period occurred after entering export markets, rather than before. For unsuccessful exporters, on the other hand, this pattern is reversed. Average annual productivity growth, however, is higher prior to entry for both groups. Finally, new exporters increase sales expenditures and earn higher revenue from new products than other firms before they start exporting. This is true when compared to both non-exporters and continuous exporters.

Essays on the Impact of New Product Introductions on Market Dynamics

Essays on the Impact of New Product Introductions on Market Dynamics
Author: Vijay Ganesh Hariharan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2010
Genre:
ISBN:

New product introduction is a key marketing strategy used by firms to protect and hopefully boost their revenues and profits. New product introductions usually trigger various shifts in market dynamics. Manufacturers of new products control the marketing mix by pricing and advertising new products. Competitors could respond by promoting their existing products, or by introducing new products. And finally, consumers can react by either switching their purchases among the existing products or to new products. This dissertation aims at significantly deepening our current understanding of several key facets of the impact of new product introductions on market dynamics. The first part focuses on analytically deriving dynamic optimal marketing mix strategies under various market diffusion dynamics for discontinuous new products. In the rest of the dissertation, we empirically analyze the dynamic effects of various types of continuous new products introduced in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Specifically, the first essay focuses on deriving dynamic optimal marketing mix strategies for new products introduced in a market with two distinct consumer segments - "influentials" and "imitators". The market evolution of demand is modeled through an empirically established diffusion function. In the second essay, we investigate aggregate spillover effects and extension success due to three types of brand development strategies - brand extensions, line extensions and cobranded extensions. We also examine the category and market factors that moderate those effects. In the third essay, we analyze the impacts of the introduction of line extensions, which are the most common form of new product introductions in the CPG industry. Specifically, we detect and investigate the shifts in category dynamics due to the introduction of four types of line extensions - novel national brand, novel store brand, imitative national brand and imitative store brand.

Barriers and Bounds to Rationality

Barriers and Bounds to Rationality
Author: Peter Albin
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2021-10-12
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0691237581

Peter Albin is known for his seminal work in applying the concepts of adaptive dynamical systems, first developed by biologists and physicists, to the study of economic systems. This book is a collection of his pathbreaking articles on the application of cellular automata and complexity theory to economic problems. Duncan Foley provides a thoughtful introduction in which he reviews the disparate analytical sources of Albin's work in the theories of nonlinear dynamical systems, economic dynamics, cellular automata, linguistic and computational complexity, and bounded rationality. Albin has analyzed economic systems as interactions of highly complex components (i.e., intelligent human beings). He uses the theories of generative linguistics and cellular automata to establish that the complexity level of economic systems is, in principle at least, that of a Turing machine or general-purpose computer, establishing that classic economic approaches to the problems of household and firm choice, macroeconomic prediction, and policy evaluation may give rise to undecidable propositions and uncomputable functions. He develops simple models of dynamic economic interaction based on cellular automata which illustrate the inherent complexity of economic interactions and the resulting challenge they pose to traditional theories of rational economic behavior. These models explore the dynamics of the business cycle, decentralized market trading, and the emergence of cooperation in a novel local-interaction version of the repeated prisoners' dilemma game. Albin's work provides a unique and important perspective on economic systems.

Essays on Firm Dynamics, Financial Frictions, and the Labor Market

Essays on Firm Dynamics, Financial Frictions, and the Labor Market
Author: Dongchen Zhao
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation consists of three chapters. The first chapter concerns the secular changes in the U.S. firm size distribution and firm dynamics. This chapter sets up a quantitative model of firm dynamics with debt heterogeneity to study the implications of changes in real interest rates for the firm size distribution and firm dynamics. It shows that the decline in long-term real interest rates since the early 1980s can account for a significant fraction of the shift in employment shares to large firms as well as the decline in firms per capita and firm entry rates experienced in the U.S. over the same period. In the model, firms endogenously choose financial intermediaries issuing debt with either earnings-based (EBC) or asset-based (ABC) borrowing constraints. The two types of constraints arise naturally from the imperfect enforceability of debt contracts and are in line with recent empirical findings. A decline in real interest rates benefits firms with EBC more because they are not constrained by their assets and can expand more due to increased earnings. Since firms with higher earnings optimally choose earnings-based lending, the decline in real interest rates shifts employment shares to larger firms. Moreover, the growth of large firms crowds out smaller firms and firm entry through general equilibrium effects. The paper tests the mechanism in cross-country data from the OECD and finds a stronger association between the decline in real interest rates and changes in firm dynamics, especially in countries with deeper credit markets. In the second chapter, I study the effects of government regulations on firm dynamism. The impact of government regulations on the economy is a central topic in policy debates. However, due to the endogeneity of regulations and challenges in measuring them, these debates remain contentious. This paper establishes the causal effects of government regulations on firm dynamism by employing a novel shift-share (Bartik) instrument in conjunction with the RegData dataset, which quantifies regulations based on the text of federal regulatory documents. The primary assumption for identification is that, for each sector, the exposure to regulations from different government agencies at the beginning of the period is exogenous to any confounding factors. The findings reveal that government regulatory restrictions significantly increase firm exit rates and discourage the formation of establishments, while having no substantial impact on firm entry. Furthermore, these restrictions contribute to reduced job creation, elevated job destruction, and diminished overall employment. These effects are consistently observed across various age groups. The results lend support to the idea that government regulations can raise production costs for firms and/or enhance the monopolistic power of certain companies. Both mechanisms can diminish the profits of affected firms, leading to increased firm exit rates and reduced labor demand. Additionally, the findings refute the interpretation of regulations as solely serving as entry barriers. The final chapter of the dissertation investigates the labor market outcomes for involuntary part-time workers and their subsequent effects on welfare levels. Through an analysis of survey data, I demonstrate that involuntary part-time workers exhibit reservation wages comparable to those of unemployed workers. This similarity largely stems from parallel wage offers and offer arrival rates. Contrary to previous research, this finding indicates that involuntary part-time workers experience welfare levels akin to unemployed workers. One possible explanation for this discrepancy lies in the methodology of prior studies. Conclusions drawn from earlier research, which primarily focused on the faster transition of involuntary part-time workers into full-time positions compared to other workers, may be flawed. This is because these workers also tend to revert to their previous job types at a faster rate. To further explore the implications of these discoveries, I employ a quantitative search model. The calibrated model supports the assertion that involuntary part-time workers experience welfare levels similar to those of unemployed workers. Furthermore, the model suggests that neither extending unemployment insurance to part-time workers nor enhancing the likelihood that unemployed workers transition to part-time positions would effectively increase the prevalence of full-time employment