On the market failure of missing pioneers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Wei, Shang-Jin; Wei, Ziru; Xu, Jianhuan
• 署名单位: Columbia University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR); Tsinghua University; Singapore Management University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102705
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Market failure; Economic development; Missing pioneer; Discovery cost

摘要

An influential hypothesis states that export pioneers are too few relative to social optimum because the first exporter's action creates an informational public good for all subsequent exporters. The hypothesis has been invoked to justify certain types of government interventions. We note, however, that such market failure requires two inequalities to hold simultaneously: the discovery cost is neither too low nor too high. Neither has to hold in the data. We propose a structural estimation framework to evaluate the hypothesis, and estimate the parameters based on the customs data of Chinese electronics exports. Our key finding is that missing pioneersis a low-probability event for large countries, but can be a serious problem for small economies.