Fixed export costs and multi-product firms

This paper has two aims. First, we uncover some salient components of fixed export
costs, which play a crucial role in recent heterogeneous firms models of international
trade. Second, we investigate whether the importance of these fixed export costs varies
with the size of a firms export product portfolio. We find that a destination country's
institutional quality, such as the quality of regulation or the extent of corruption, form
important impediments to a firm's export decision, lowering the export probability by up
to 10%-points. Moreover, relative to single-product firms, multi-product firms experience
additional export probability decreases of around 2%-points.