Within-Industry Specialization and Global Market Power

Abstract

Export price levels exhibit tremendous cross-national and spatial variation, even within narrowly defined industries. Standard theories attribute this variation to within-industry quality specialization. This paper argues that a significant portion of the export price variation is driven by rich and remote economies specializing in high-market power segments of industries. I also argue that this particular pattern of specialization (i) accounts for 30 percent of the overall gains from trade, and (ii) explains more than 37 percent of the observed cross-national income inequality.