About

Marc Melitz is the David A. Wells Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He holds a B.A. from Haverford College (1989), an M.S.B.A. from the Robert Smith School of Business (1992), and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (2000). He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), CESifo, and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. His broad research interests are in international trade and investment. More specifically, he studies producer-level responses to globalization and their implications for aggregate trade and investment patterns. His research has been funded by the Sloan Foundation and by the NSF.

Research topics

• Macroeconomics
• Business
• Monetary economics
• Economics
• Econometrics

Selected publications

• Industrial Policies for Multi-Stage Production: The Battle for Battery-Powered Vehicles

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The Laffer curve for rules of origin

  Journal of International Economics · 2024-03-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Opposing Firm-Level Responses to the China Shock: Output Competition versus Input Supply

  American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 2024-05-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  We decompose the “China shock” into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, and an input supply shock affecting firms using inputs similar to the imported Chinese goods. Combining French accounting, customs, and patent information at the firm level, we show that the output shock is detrimental to firms’ sales, employment, and innovation. Moreover, this negative impact is concentrated in low-productivity firms. On the other hand, the impact of the input supply shock is reversed. (JEL D22, D24, F14, J23, L25, O31, O34)

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Chapter 6 Trade and Innovation

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2023-08-16

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Contents

  Harvard University Press eBooks · 2023-08-16

  paratextOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The unintended consequences of high regional content requirements

  2023-10-26

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  Rules of origin (RoOs) are a common feature of regional trade agreements that fall short of full custom unions. Two of the most important trade agreements, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU), recently enacted major changes to those rules. The 2020 USMCA agreement replacing NAFTA made those rules much stricter. Meanwhile, following its exit from the EU customs union, Britain and the remaining EU27 had to draw up new rules of origin for the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). This chapter quantifies the main trade-offs involved in setting the strictness of RoOs in the context of the automobile industry. A more stringent agreement can raise or lower regional parts production, but it inevitably raises prices. Fitting our model to data on the use of NAFTA-origin parts in cars assembled within the region, we calibrate the key parameters that govern the responses to stricter RoOs. We then apply the calibrated model to evaluate the switch from NAFTA to the USMCA as well as other counterfactuals of interest.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Aggregate-Demand Amplification of Supply Disruptions: The Entry-Exit Multiplier

  Apollo (University of Cambridge) · 2023-10-20

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Due to its impact on nominal firm profits, price rigidity amplifies the response of entry and exit to supply shocks. When those supply shocks are negative, such as those following supply chain disruptions, this “entry-exit multiplier” substantially magnifies the associated welfare losses—especially when wages are also rigid. This is in stark contrast to the benchmark New Keynesian model (NK), which predicts a positive output gap in response to that same shock under the same monetary policy. Endogenous entry-exit thus radically changes the consequences of nominal rigidities. In addition to the aggregate-demand amplification of supply disruptions, our model also reconciles the response of hours worked across the NK and RBC models. And unlike the standard NK model, our model can also be used to evaluate how monetary expansions can alleviate or even eliminate the negative output gap induced by supply disruptions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Economie Internationale (12e ed.)

  2022-09-01

  bookSenior author
  Publisher

• Replication data for The Heterogeneous Impact of Market Size on Innovation: Evidence from French Firm-Level Exports

  Harvard Dataverse · 2022-03-14

  datasetOpen accessSenior author

  The Heterogeneous Impact of Market Size on Innovation: Evidence from French Firm-Level Exports (P. Aghion, A. Bergeaud, M. Lequien and M. Melitz).

  PublisherDOI

• International trade and innovation

  Handbook of international economics · 2022-01-01 · 38 citations

  book-chapterSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Fabio Ghironi

  University of Washington

  289 shared

• Florin Bilbiie

  University of Cambridge

  205 shared

• Thierry Mayer

  Banque de France

  130 shared

• Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano

  Bocconi University

  112 shared

• Stephen J. Redding

  43 shared

• Philippe Aghion

  Collège de France

  29 shared

• Elhanan Helpman

  27 shared

• Alejandro Cuñat

  Vienna University of Economics and Business

  22 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  Harvard University

  1996

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Berkeley

  1991

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Sloan Foundation funding
• NSF funding