TY  - JOUR
AU  - Khandelwal,Amit
TI  - The Long and Short (of) Quality Ladders
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15178
PY  - 2009
Y2  - July 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15178
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15178.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Amit Khandelwal
Graduate School of Business
Columbia University
Uris Hall 606, 3022 Broadway
New York, NY 10027
Tel: 212/854-7506
Fax: 212/316-9219
E-Mail: ak2796@columbia.edu
AB  - Prices are typically used as proxies for countries' export quality. I relax this strong assumption by exploiting both price and quantity information to estimate the quality of products exported to the U.S. Higher quality is assigned to products with higher market shares conditional on price. The estimated qualities reveal substantial heterogeneity in product markets' scope for quality differentiation, or their "quality ladders.'' I use this variation to explain the heterogeneous impact of low-wage competition on U.S. manufacturing employment and output. Markets characterized by relatively shorter quality ladders are associated with larger employment and output declines resulting from low-wage competition.
ER  -