Firm-destination heterogeneity and the distribution of export intensity

We derive closed-form expressions for the distribution of export intensity when firm-destination-specific revenue shifters are distributed gamma, Fréchet and Weibull in a two-country model of trade with isoelastic demand. We estimate the parameters governing the distribution of export intensity for each type of revenue shifter across 72 countries. We compare the model's fit to the distribution of export intensity across countries when revenue shifters are distributed lognormal, gamma and Fréchet/Weibull. While lognormal slightly outperforms the other distributions, all revenue shifters considered reproduce salient features of export intensity distributions within and between countries quite successfully.