IMPORT COMPETITION AND QUALITY UPGRADING

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Amiti, Mary; Khandelwal, Amit K.
• 署名单位: Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York; Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6535
• DOI: 10.1162/REST_a_00271
• 发表日期: 2013-05
• 页码: 476-490
• 关键词: trade liberalization; intermediate inputs; GROWTH; PRODUCTIVITY; INNOVATION; prices; models; IMPACT

摘要

The production of high-quality goods is often viewed as a precondition for export success and economic development. We provide the first evidence that countries' import tariffs affect the rate at which they upgrade product quality. Our analysis uses highly disaggregated data covering exports from 56 countries across 10,000 products to the United States using a novel approach to measure quality. As predicted by distance-to-the-frontier models, we find that lower tariffs are associated with quality upgrading for products close to the world quality frontier, whereas lower tariffs discourage quality upgrading for products distant from the frontier.