| Summary: | This dissertation consists of three chapters in the eld of international trade. The
rst two, jointly written with Matilde Bombardini and Giovanni Gallipoli, explore
the role of skill dispersion as a source of comparative advantage. The first chapter
presents a tractable multi-country, multi-sector model of trade with search frictions
in which comparative advantage derives from (i) cross-sectoral differences in
the substitutability of workers’ skills and (ii) cross-country differences in the dispersion
of skills in the working population. We provide conditions under which
higher skill dispersion triggers specialization in sectors characterized by higher
substitutability among workers’ skills.
The second chapter explores the empirical relevance of skill dispersion as a
determinant of the pattern of trade across industries. The analysis relies on microdata
from the International Adult Literacy Survey to construct measures of skill
dispersion. Results indicate that the latter has a significant effect on the pattern of
trade across industries, of a magnitude comparable to the aggregate endowments
of human and physical capital. The result is robust to the controls for other proximate
causes of comparative advantage, such as institutional quality and flexibility
of labour markets.
The third chapter offers a relatively unconventional approach to the empirical
analysis of the factors that determine export decisions at the firm level, by exploring whether the characteristics of firms geographically located close to each other
play a role in shaping their individual entry decisions. In particular, I develop an
empirical framework to study whether export participation decisions of individual
firms are influenced by non-market interactions (e.g. learning or imitation) with
firms that belong to a common reference group. The main testable hypothesis is
that, in the presence of entry costs, group composition affects the degree of state
dependence of individual export decisions. This proposition is tested by applying a
dynamic panel data estimator to a data set of Argentine manufacturing firms. The
findings show that group composition influences individual export decisions. Most
of this effect is channelled through entry costs. Firms benefit from proximity to
productive firms but not from proximity to other exporters.
|
|---|
