Essays on International Trade of U.S. Manufacturing Firms

This thesis analyzes exporting and importing behavior of U.S. manufacturing firms. Importing firms in U.S. manufacturing choose different organizational forms. Higher headquarters input share, higher productivity, and lower trade costs are associated with a higher importer's fraction of inputs that are intra-firm. These results are consistent with the theoretical models based on the property-rights approach as opposed to those that emphasize the role of managerial incentives. This project uses a firm-country dataset to examine the causality between exporting and firm productivity, sales, employment, capital intensity, and skill level using the exchange rate shocks produced by the Asian financial crisis. The estimation results show that export growth has no significant effect on productivity and other firm characteristics. The empirical evidence is consistent with the self-selection of exporters and does not support the learning-by-exporting theory. Export unit values vary depending on factors related to both the exporting firm and the importing country. Using product-level data for exporting firms in U.S. manufacturing, this paper tests predictions of the quality-based model of Baldwin and Harrigan (2007). The estimation results support the predictions about the positive effects of distance to the importing country and an exporting firm's productivity on unit prices.