Lexicographic biases in international trade

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cheng, Hua; Hu, Cui; Li, Ben G.
• 署名单位: Peking University; Central University of Finance & Economics; Boston College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2020.103346
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: Alphabetic bias; language; gravity models; behavioral economics

摘要

The names of traders should not matter if information is symmetric across traders. By examining export data from Chinese customs, we find persistent lexicographic biases in firm-level export records. Firms whose names are lexicographically earlier in the Chinese-character rank export more to countries that have greater language proximities to Chinese, while firms whose names are lexicographically earlier in the English-romanization rank export more to countries that have greater language proximities to English. The lexicographic biases signify linguistic visibility as a source of comparative advantage in international trade. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.