What do Exporters Know?*
研究出口商在决定是否进入外国市场时，所拥有的信息如何影响其决策。发现大企业即使未出口过，也更了解外国市场条件，且更好的信息会提高总出口但减少出口商数量。
Much of the variation in international trade volume is driven by firms’ extensive margin decisions of whether to participate in export markets. We evaluate how the information potential exporters possess influences their decisions. We estimate a model of export participation in which firms weigh the fixed costs of exporting against the forecasted profits from serving a foreign market. We adopt a moment inequality approach, placing weak assumptions on firms’ expectations. The framework allows us to test whether firms differ in the information they have about foreign markets. We find that larger firms possess better knowledge of market conditions in foreign countries, even when those firms have not exported in the past. Quantifying the value of information, we show that, in a typical destination, total exports rise while the number of exporters falls when firms have access to better information to forecast export revenues.