The Decision to Export and the Volatility of Sales

This paper studies the export decision of risk-averse firms in a model featuring aggregate uncertainty and no capital markets. Firms seeking to enter the foreign market face a sunk cost as well as a fixed participation cost every period they export. Using a calibrated version of the model, I show that firms are more likely to export when the correlation between domestic and foreign aggregate shocks is negative and when their degree of risk-aversion is higher. Counterfactual experiments show that exporting increases the volatility of total sales.Exports, Aggregate uncertainty, Heterogeneous-firm models of international trade