Hege Medin

Market specific fixed and sunk export costs: The impact of learning and spillovers

Sunk export costs: How they influence firms’ export decisions and international trade

Market specific fixed and sunk export costs – Learning and spillovers

Regionale og bilaterale handelsavtaler i Latin-Amerika. Konsekvenser for norsk eksport

Factors behind the environmental Kuznets curve. A decomposition of the changes in air pollution

Firms' export decisions - fixed trade costs and the size of the export market

Learning, Networks and Sunk Costs in International trade: Evidence form Norwegian Seafood Exports

Based on new survey data for 81 Norwegian seafood exporters, the report examines the composition and magnitude of different types of trade costs, ranging from tariffs and transport costs to other sales costs. The results suggest that there are economies of scale in the exporting activity, due to fixed costs of market entry, learning through experience, and externalities between firms so that one exporter benefits from the others via learning or joint marketing effects. Seafood exports strongly rely on personal networks, and firms incur costs in order to establish these networks. On the whole, however, fixed sales costs for seafood exports are small, due to these products being relatively homogeneous. In spite of this, such costs matter for the choice of markets and the magnitude of trade. The report analyses how costs vary across products, firms and markets. For seafood exports, traditional trade barriers such as tariffs and transport costs are more important than the sunk costs. Transport costs do not increase proportionally with geographical distance, mainly since this is not the case for sea transports.

Bokanmeldelse: Globalisering, næringslokalisering og økonomisk politikk

Firms' export decisions - fixed trade costs and the size of the export market

This article presents two models of international trade under monopolistic competition. In increasing returns sectors firms face fixed, in addition to variable, trade costs, therefore both exporters and non-exporters may coexist. While nonexporters benefit from access to large domestic markets, exporters benefit from access to large foreign markets. Consequently, a small country has a higher share of exporting firms than a large one. In contrast to standard models, increasing returns sectors turn out more open in small countries than in large ones, and small countries may be net exporters of such commodities, despite the disadvantage of a smaller home market.