Monopolistic competition: CES redux?

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of International Economics
Year: 2014
Volume: 93
Issue: 2
Pages: 227-238

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

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.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:inecon:v:93:y:2014:i:2:p:227-238
Journal Field
International
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-01-24