NBER Publications by Chong Xiang

In this paper, we develop a simple empirical method to test two alternative versions of the Melitz (2003) model, one with global fixed export costs and one with bilateral fixed export costs. With global costs, import sales per product variety (relative to domestic sales per variety) are decreasing in variable trade barriers, as a result of adjustment occurring along the intensive margin of trade. With bilateral costs, imports per product variety are increasing in fixed trade costs, due to adjustment occurring along the extensive margin. We apply our approach to data on imports of U.S. motion pictures in 46 countries over 1995-2006. Imports per product variety are decreasing in geographic distance, linguistic distance, and other measures of trade costs, consistent with adjustment to the...

We examine a generalized version of Flam and Helpman’s (1987) model of vertical differentiation that maps cross-country differences in income distributions to variations in import variety and price distributions. The theoretical predictions are examined and confirmed using micro data on income from the Luxemburg Income Study for 30 countries over 20 years. The pairs of importers whose income distributions look more similar have more export partners in common and more similar import price distributions. Similarly, the importers whose income distributions look more like the world buy from more exporters and have import price distributions that look more like the world.