Estimating export-productivity cutoff contours with profit data: A novel threshold estimation approach
提出一种新方法，估计企业进入出口市场的生产率阈值，允许固定成本随企业变化，并利用中国企业数据发现阈值存在显著异质性和轮廓，挑战了传统单阈值假设。
This paper develops a novel method to estimate firm-specific market-entry thresholds in international economics, allowing fixed costs to vary across firms alongside productivity. Our framework models market entry as an interaction between productivity and observable fixed-cost measures, extending traditional single-threshold models to ones with set-valued thresholds. Applying this approach to Chinese firm data, we estimate export-market entry thresholds as functions of domestic sales and surrogate variables for fixed costs. The results reveal substantial heterogeneity and threshold contours, challenging conventional single-threshold-point assumptions. These findings offer new insights into firm behavior and provide a foundation for further theoretical and empirical advancements in trade research.