Hui和Sundraesan于2015年3月15日发布在第十三届国际产业组织会议上的“Cross-Border Trade and SMEs: A Large-Scale Online Experiment”一文，研究了eBay上的一个出口便利化项目对企业出口行为的影响。
企业进入国际市场时需要同时支付固定成本与可变成本，这些成本的存在严重地阻碍了企业，尤其是中小企业的国际市场参与行为。为此，许多国家都实施了促进企业出口，尤其是促进中小企业出口的措施。2012年10月，eBay上开始了一项促进卖家产品出口便利化的全球运送项目。该项目实施以后，卖家只需要将出口产品运输至设立在肯塔基州的运送中心，剩余的物流过程就由专业的运送部门来负责；产品到达运送中心后，卖家也不再需要承担由于包装损坏等所导致的成本。起初，这一项目的实施范围只限于从美国进口产品的8个国家，截至2014年2月，实施范围扩展至从美国进口产品的42个国家。这一项目同时降低了企业进入国际市场的固定成本与边际成本。
为此，文章研究了eBay的这种出口便利化政策对企业出口行为的影响。作者有如下五个方面的发现。第一，这一项目使得eBay上的出口总体上增加了9.3%，对小企业出口的促进作用为14.6%。第二，引力模型结果表明，这一项目使得贸易对距离的弹性降低了16.4%。第三，这一项目增进了出口市场竞争。第四，即便这一项目消除了出口成本，仍有31%的商品只向国内销售。这意味着，“缺失的贸易”可能不仅源自与出口相关的经济成本，还源自卖家的“感知成本”。第五，买家愿意为这一项目提供的优质服务支付多10%的费用。
Abstract: Despite the economic significance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), few of them export due to prohibitively high entry costs to foreign markets. However, trade policies have largely focused on reducing tariffs, which benefits mainly bigger firms as these policies merely reduce marginal export costs. In this paper, we evaluate a Export Promotion Program (EPP) on eBay, the Global Shipping Program (GSP), which removes U.S. sellers’ fixed costs of entering foreign markets and marginal export cost by completely taking care of the export processes. We regard GSP as a large-scale online experiment based on real trade data, which sheds light on the increasing policy attention of promoting SMEs’ export. Our results indicate that GSP reduces trade elasticity of distance by 16.4% and increases U.S. export on the platform by 9.3% with a larger effect on smaller sellers. On the other hand, foreign sellers face fiercer competition due to U.S. sellers’ entry, forcing 6.6% foreign sellers to exit the markets; average sales price and the Herfindahl index fall by 0.5% and 4.6%, respectively. This competition effect is less intense for homogeneous goods (such as electronics and DVDs), as foreign sellers have cost advantages in shipping. Furthermore, listing data indicates that 31% GSP-eligible listings are for domestic sale only despite the absence of export costs after GSP, suggesting the “mystery of missing trade” stems not only from export-related economic costs, but also from sellers’ “perception costs”. Finally, demand side analyses demonstrate that foreign buyers are willing to pay 10% more for the reduced risk perception and enjoy a 1.6% larger product variety.
