演講者簡介 : Raymond G. Riezman received his Ph.D. in Economics from University of Minnesota in 1977. He is currently C. Woody Thompson Research Professor of Economics at University of Iowa. His research fields are international trade, political economy, and microeconomics.
演講摘要 : The role of intermediaries in international trade is a topic of renewed interest. Recent firm level evidence has shown that it is not only specialized wholesalers and retailers that engage in the trading of other firms' goods, but manufacturing firms are also exporting products that they do not produce themselves. Bernard et. al. (2012) call this "Carry-Along Trade" (CAT) and show that it is a widespread phenomenon among Belgian manufacturing exports. In this paper, we study why manufacturing firms may decide to have their products carried-along instead of exporting their products themselves. We show that if the "Delivery of Own Goods" (DOG) is an alternative option, the profitability of CAT is related to the profitability of collusion and the degree of transportation costs synergies. Consequently, CAT dominates DOG if the synergies from transporting and selling products jointly exceed the disadvantages of de-specialization. By focusing on demand linkages and transportation cost synergies, we are able to derive a number of testable predictions regarding firm/market characteristics that tend to reinforce the appearance of CAT.
