Monopolistic competition: CES redux?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bertoletti, Paolo; Epifani, Paolo
• 署名单位: University of Pavia; Bocconi University; Bocconi University; Bocconi University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.04.003
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 227-238
• 关键词: monopolistic competition; CES preferences; international trade; Competitive and reallocation effects

摘要

We study the competitive and reallocation effects of trade opening in monopolistic competition. To this purpose, we generalize the Melitz (2003) setup with heterogeneous firms and fixed and variable trade costs beyond the CES to the case of additively separable utility functions. We find that extensive margin (Melitz-type selection) effects are robust to relaxing the CES assumption. Intensive margin effects (market share reallocations across inframarginal firms) and competitive (markup) effects are instead fragile. An important implication is that measured productivity gains from trade opening are no longer ensured with non-CES preferences. We discuss our results in the light of alternative setups featuring non-additive preferences, strategic interaction and consumers' preference for an ideal variety. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.