Openness, managerial incentives, and heterogeneous firms |
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Authors: | Zhihong Yu |
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Affiliation: | 1. The Leverhulme Centre for Research on Globalisation and Economic Policy, School of Economics, Nottingham University, C4, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham, NG72RD, UK
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Abstract: | This paper examines the effects of trade openness on managerial incentives and firm-level productivity by incorporating the principal-agent mechanism into the heterogeneous firm trade framework inter alia Melitz (Econometrica 71:1695?C1725, 2003). We show that opening up to trade generally leads to a steeper optimal managerial incentive scheme (and hence, higher firm productivity) via a new mechanism by which selection of heterogeneous firms into the export market plays a key role. This is because trade openness unambiguously increases the variation of firm profits by reallocating profits towards ex post low-cost exporters, leading to a higher stake of the market game faced by the principals. Interestingly, it is further shown that, whilst falling variable trade costs unambiguously increase managerial incentives, a reduction in fixed trade costs could possibly lead to weaker incentives and thus generate productivity losses due to an adverse inter-firm reallocation effect. Hence, the model establishes a causal link between the Melitz-type reallocation effect and the within-firm productivity changes, both of which have been identified as important sources of aggregate productivity gains from trade by recent empirical studies. |
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