Michael B. Devereux

General seminars
amse seminar

Michael B. Devereux

University of British Columbia
Trade flows and exchange rates: Importers, exporters and products
Joint with
Ben Tomlin, Wei Dong
Venue

IBD Amphi

Îlot Bernard du Bois - Amphithéâtre

AMU - AMSE
5-9 boulevard Maurice Bourdet
13001 Marseille

Date(s)
Monday, April 16 2018| 2:30pm to 4:00pm
Contact(s)

Timothée Demont: timothee.demont[at]univ-amu.fr
Roberta Ziparo: rziparo[at]gmail.com

Abstract

We document a number of novel facts on the role of importer, exporter, and product relation- ships in the determination of trade flows using very detailed transaction-level data on Canadian imports. Notably, we find that the import market is dominated by a few domestic importers and foreign exporters, and that the introduction of new products into pre-existing buyer-seller relationships accounts for nearly half of import flows. We rationalize these findings in a model of international trade with monopolistic competition and multi-product exporters. In particular, we show that imports respond to exchange rate movements mainly through adjusting the scope of products within existing buyer-seller relationships and through the pure intensive margin; the response through firm entry-and-exit into trade (pure extensive margin) is very small.