Trade, Finance, and Endogenous Firm Heterogeneity
研究了金融摩擦如何通过影响企业投资决策，内生地改变企业间的生产率差异和规模分布，进而影响出口；利用美国进口数据验证了金融发展会扩大企业销售分散度。
We study how financial frictions affect firm-level heterogeneity and trade. We build a modelin which productivity differences across monopolistically competitive firms are endogenous anddepend on investment decisions at the entry stage. By increasing entry costs, financial frictionslower the exit cutoff and hence the value of investing in bigger projects with more dispersedoutcomes. As a result, financial frictions make firms smaller and more homogeneous, and hinder the volume of exports. Export opportunities, instead, shift expected profits to the tail andincrease the value of technological heterogeneity. We test these predictions using comparablemeasures of sales dispersion within 365 manufacturing industries in 119 countries, built fromhighly disaggregated US import data. Consistent with the model, financial development in-creases sales dispersion, especially in more financially vulnerable industries; sales dispersion isalso increasing in measures of comparative advantage. These results help explaining the effectof financial development and factor endowments on export sales.