The role of endowments, technology and size in international trade: new evidence from product-level data

Using product-level trade data, we empirically investigate the export patterns of more than 150 countries in their exports to the U.S., Brazil, India and Japan. We document strong evidence that exporters specialize according to their relative factor endowments, technology, and economic size. Moreover, developed, economically larger, and technologically-advanced countries are the major exporters of new products, spanning a wide range of product categories with high unit values. Our findings constitute a building block for the phenomenon that a large proportion of the global trade takes place among developed economies, and that the latter are also major exporters to developing markets.