How big is the elasticity of substitution between goods from different countries—the Armington elasticity? Estimates of the macroelasticity between home and imported goods are often smaller than the microelasticity between foreign sources of imports. Using new, highly disaggregate U.S. production data matched to imports and simulated data from a Melitz-style model with nested CES preferences, we explore estimation techniques for the two elasticities. For between two-thirds and three-quarters of sample goods, there is no significant difference between the macro- and microelasticities, but for the rest, the microelasticity is significantly higher, even at the same level of disaggregation.

This paper examines why credit constraints for domestic and exporting firms arise in a setting where banks do not observe firms' productivities. To maintain incentive compatibility, banks lend below the amount that firms need for optimal production. The longer time needed for export shipments induces a tighter credit constraint on exporters than on purely domestic firms. In our application to Chinese firms, we find that the credit constraint is more stringent as a firm's export share grows, as the time to ship for exports is lengthened, and as there is greater dispersion of firms' productivities, reflecting more incomplete information.

We propose a new approach to the international comparison of real GDP, as measured from the output-side. The traditional Gary-Khamis system, which measures real GDP from the expenditure-side, is modified to include differences in the terms of trade between countries. It is shown that this system has a strictly positive solution under mild assumptions. On the basis of a sample of 151 countries in 1996, it is shown that differences between real GDP measured from the expenditure-side and output-side can be substantial, especially for small open economies. We also obtain cross-country measures of “real openness” and the terms of trade.

We develop a procedure to rank-order objects using censored panel data sets. We illustrate this by ranking countries and commodities using disaggregated American import data and find evidence that countries and commodities can be ranked. Countries habitually begin to export goods to the United States according to an ordering; goods are also exported in order. We estimate these orderings using a methodology, that takes account of the fact that most goods are not exported by most countries in our sample. Our orderings seem sensible, robust, and intuitive, and they are correlated with macroeconomic phenomena such as productivity and growth rates.