Working Paper: NBER ID: w17925
Authors: Jan De Loecker; Pinelopi K. Goldberg; Amit K. Khandelwal; Nina Pavcnik
Abstract: This paper examines how prices, markups and marginal costs respond to trade liberalization. We develop a framework to estimate markups from production data with multi-product firms. This approach does not require assumptions on the market structure or demand curves faced by firms, nor assumptions on how firms allocate their inputs across products. We exploit quantity and price information to disentangle markups from quantity-based productivity, and then compute marginal costs by dividing observed prices by the estimated markups. We use India’s trade liberalization episode to examine how firms adjust these performance measures. Not surprisingly, we find that trade liberalization lowers factory-gate prices and that output tariff declines have the expected pro-competitive effects. However, the price declines are small relative to the declines in marginal costs, which fall predominantly because of the input tariff liberalization. The reason for this incomplete cost pass-through to prices is that firms offset their reductions in marginal costs by raising markups. Our results demonstrate substantial heterogeneity and variability in markups across firms and time and suggest that producers benefited relative to consumers, at least immediately after the reforms.
Keywords: Trade Liberalization; Markups; Marginal Costs; India
JEL Codes: F1; L1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| trade liberalization (F13) | decrease in factory-gate prices (L11) |
| trade liberalization (F13) | decrease in marginal costs (D40) |
| reductions in input tariffs (F14) | decrease in marginal costs (D40) |
| decrease in marginal costs (D40) | incomplete cost pass-through to prices (D41) |
| increasing markups (D43) | incomplete cost pass-through to prices (D41) |
| decrease in marginal costs (D40) | increase in markups (D43) |