Address:
491 Engineering 2
University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
E-Mail: mbelenki@ucsc.edu
About Me: 
I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
I am on the Job Market in 2009-2010 and will attend AEA meetings in Atlanta
My main research areas are International Trade, and Applied Microeconomics and Econometrics.
JOB MARKET PAPER:
The Extensive Margin in the Industry Trade: Estimation, Significance and Implications PDF (draft - October 2009)Abstract
What determines the significance of the extensive margin (number of exporting firms) in the gravity model of trade with heterogeneous firms? Helpman, Melitz and Rubenstein (HMR) provide evidence that the neglect of the role played by firm heterogeneity can bias upward the estimates of the gravity model. However, when the gravity model is estimated for exports from OECD to non-OECD countries (a setting where the HMR correction should be the most apparent), firm heterogeneity plays no role. To shed light on this puzzle I further decompose the world trade data between three industries (manufacturing, mining and agriculture). The presumption is that the HMR correction should be most prominent for manufacturing trade and less so for the other industries. I confirm this prediction and find that using the trade data at an aggregate level confounds the significance of the extensive margin by mixing the industries. In addition, I show that there is an important relationship between the HMR correction and the upward bias in the gravity estimates: the upward bias is strong only when the extensive margin is a significant determinant of the trade flows. I set up industry level HMR framework to explain these findings.