Quality of firms' imports and distance to countries of origin: First evidence from Germany
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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in: Economics Bulletin, Jahrgang 36, Nr. 1, 22.03.2016, S. 515-521.
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Quality of firms' imports and distance to countries of origin
T2 - First evidence from Germany
AU - Wagner, Joachim
PY - 2016/3/22
Y1 - 2016/3/22
N2 - This paper documents a new fact: The quality of goods imported by German firms increases with distance to the countries of origin. This holds after controlling for fixed effects for goods, for firms, and for firm-product combinations. The empirical investigation uses a tailor-made new data set of 3,204,851 observations for import quality (measured by the unit value of imports) at the firm-product-origin level for the reporting year 2011. Data are from 138,688 firms that imported 4,986 products (recorded at the HS6-level) in 1,938,602 firm-product combinations from 175 countries. Trade costs - which are related to distance - lead to within-firm selection of product quality across countries of origin. Firms that import multiple vertically-differentiated varieties of a product source higher quality varieties on more distant markets.
AB - This paper documents a new fact: The quality of goods imported by German firms increases with distance to the countries of origin. This holds after controlling for fixed effects for goods, for firms, and for firm-product combinations. The empirical investigation uses a tailor-made new data set of 3,204,851 observations for import quality (measured by the unit value of imports) at the firm-product-origin level for the reporting year 2011. Data are from 138,688 firms that imported 4,986 products (recorded at the HS6-level) in 1,938,602 firm-product combinations from 175 countries. Trade costs - which are related to distance - lead to within-firm selection of product quality across countries of origin. Firms that import multiple vertically-differentiated varieties of a product source higher quality varieties on more distant markets.
KW - Economics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84976599647&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Journal articles
VL - 36
SP - 515
EP - 521
JO - Economics Bulletin
JF - Economics Bulletin
SN - 1545-2921
IS - 1
ER -