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This paper explores the role of sunk costs versus learning in explaining persistence in exporting. Multiple studies attributed such persistence to sunk market-entry costs. This paper shows that similar patterns of exporting are also consistent with a learning mechanism and finds a strong empirical support for such a mechanism in the context of Colombian plant-level data. Second, the paper empirically discriminates between the two competing theories, and finds that once learning is controlled for, the role of sunk costs in generating export persistence is at most forty percent of what is currently estimated in the literature. Finally, while in differentiated-products industries export persistence arises primarily due to learning, in the homogeneous-products industries such persistence arises primarily due to the sunk-cost mechanism.

New exporters add and drop products with much greater frequency than old exporters. This paper rationalizes this behavior with a model of demand learning. In the model, an exporter's profitability on the demand side is determined by a timeinvariant firm-destination appeal index, and transient firm-destination-year preference shocks. New exporters must learn about their appeal index in the presence of these shocks, and respond to fluctuations in demand by adding and dropping products more frequently than older exporters because they have less information about their attractiveness to consumers. Calibrated to match cross-section distribution of sales and scope, the model quantitatively accounts for the contribution of the extensive margins to aggregate Brazilian exports. The model predicts that in response to a decline in trade costs existing exporters add new products and new exporters enter a destination. Counterfactual implies that the contribution of product adding to export growth resulting from trade liberalization is three times larger than the contribution of exporter entry.

We document new facts about the evolution of firm performance and prices in international markets and propose a theory of firm dynamics emphasizing the interaction between learning about demand and quality choice to explain the observed patterns. Using data from the Portuguese manufacturing sector, we find that: (1) firms with longer spells of activity in export destinations tend to ship larger quantities at lower prices; (2) older exporters tend to use more expensive inputs; (3) the volatility of output and input prices tends to decline with export experience; and (4) input prices and quantities tend to increase with revenue growth within firms. We develop a model of endogenous input and output quality choices in a learning environment that is able to account for these patterns. Counterfactual simulations reveal that minimum quality standards on traded goods reduce welfare by lowering entry in export markets and reallocating resources from old and large towards young and small firms.

Using Brazilian export data that, unlike many trade data sets, have a full record of small export sales, this paper reconsiders trade elasticities and the welfare gains from trade. Using the Brazilian data, this paper provides novel evidence on the properties of the distributions of log-export sales and shows that the double exponentially modified Gaussian (EMG) distribution parsimoniously captures these properties. Using the double EMG distribution in a standard monopolistic competition model of trade, this paper demonstrates that data truncation, which is prevalent in many data sets, leads to an upward bias in measuring the partial elasticity of trade with respect to variable trade costs. This bias subsequently leads to the underestimation of the gains from trade by 1% to 9% depending on the extent of data truncation, a range that is commensurate with typical economic growth and large booms.Résumé. Double distribution gaussienne modifiée de façon exponentielle (EMG) et élasticités commerciales. En s'appuyant sur les données relatives aux exportations brésiliennes consignant, contrairement à de nombreux autres ensembles de données, tous les volumes de ventes à l'exportation y compris les plus petits, cet article réexamine l'élasticité des échanges et les bienfaits sociaux en découlant. Grâce à ces données, l'article offre un nouvel éclairage sur les propriétés des distributions relatives aux ventes à l'exportation consignées, et montre que la double distribution gaussienne modifiée de façon exponentielle (EMG) ne reflète que partiellement ces propriétés. En utilisant cette double distribution dans un modèle commercial standard caractérisé par une concurrence monopolistique, cet article démontre que la troncature des données, fréquente dans de nombreux ensembles de données, génère des erreurs systématiques par excès lorsque l'on mesure l'élasticité partielle des échanges par rapport aux coûts commerciaux variables.