Wholesalers and Retailers in US Trade

摘要

Trading firms exhibit substantial heterogeneity and can be quite different from thern"stylized" trading firm emphasized in much of the recent literature in international trade. While pure wholesalers are relatively numerous, they are on average smaller than pure producers and account for a relatively small share of trade value. While pure wholesalers are concentrated in agriculture-related sectors, pure producers and mixed firms are more prevalent in industries more likely to contain differentiated goods, such as transportation. Pure wholesalers are relatively less sensitive to market size and import disproportionately from China and other low-wage countries. Together with differences in product specialization, this leads to departures on the import side from the standard gravity equation predictions for trade.