% WARNING: This file may contain UTF-8 (unicode) characters. % While non-8-bit characters are officially unsupported in BibTeX, you % can use them with the biber backend of biblatex % usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex} @techreport{NBERw13326, title = "Innovation, firm dynamics, and international trade", author = "Atkeson, Andrew and Burstein, Ariel", institution = "National Bureau of Economic Research", type = "Working Paper", series = "Working Paper Series", number = "13326", year = "2007", month = "August", doi = {10.3386/w13326}, URL = "http://www.nber.org/papers/w13326", abstract = {We present a general equilibrium model of the decisions of firms to innovate and to engage in international trade. We use the model to analyze the impact of a reduction in international trade costs on firms' process and product innovative activity. We first show analytically that if all firms export with equal intensity, then a reduction in international trade costs has no impact at all, in steady-state, on firms' investments in process innovation. We then show that if only a subset of firms export, a decline in marginal trade costs raises process innovation in exporting firms relative to that of non-exporting firms. This reallocation of process innovation reinforces existing patterns of comparative advantage, and leads to an amplified response of trade volumes and output over time. In a quantitative version of the model, we show that the increase in process innovation is largely offset by a decline in product innovation. We find that, even if process innovation is very elastic and leads to a large dynamic response of trade, output, consumption, and the firm size distribution, the dynamic welfare gains are very similar to those in a model with inelastic process innovation.}, }