The main challenge in analyzing product quality is that it is unobserved at the macro and the micro level. A common feature in related studies is to employ price-based ad hoc proxies to measure product quality, however, high product prices do not necessarily suggest high product quality. Piveteau and Smagghue (2019) proposed a strategy that estimates product quality from the demand side, exploiting information coming from the importing activity of exporters to deal with price endogeneity challenge, albeit requiring extensive disaggregated data. This paper builds upon their work, offering an easy to implement instrument-free demand estimation method to infer product quality using the properties of the Gaussian Copula. Empirical testing of this alternative method is conducted using data from Greek exporting firms between 2002 and 2014.
Zoom link: https://uoc-gr.zoom.us/j/97374751400?pwd=UjZ4cUVaSXZ2bnZUT1BNSVhySFlDQT09
