Trade and Variety in a Model of Endogenous Product Differentiation
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Philipps-Universität Marburg
Abstract
This paper sets up a model of endogenous product differentiation to analyze the variety effects of international trade. In our model multi-product firms decide not only about the number of varieties they supply but also about the degree of horizontal differentiation between these varieties. Firms can raise the degree of differentiation by investing variety-specific fixed costs. In this setting, we analyze how trade integration, i.e. an increase in market size, influences the number of firms in the market, the number of product varieties supplied by each
firm, and the degree of differentiation.
Keywords
multi-product firms, Product differentiation, international trade.