摘要：Weak enforcement of international contracts can substantially reduce
international trade. We develop a model where agents build reputations to
overcome the difficulties that this institutional failure causes in a context of
incomplete information. The model describes the interplay between institutional
quality, reputations and the dynamics of international trade. We find that the
conditional probability that a firm will stop exporting decreases and its
foreign sales increase as the firm acquires greater export experience. The
reason is that the informational costs that an exporter faces fall as the
exporter becomes more confident about the reliability of its distributor. An
improvement in the institutional quality of a country affects its imports
through several distinct channels, as it changes the incentives of both current
and potential exporters. Trade liberalization induces current exporters to
increase their sales. It could induce entry as well, but this will happen only
when the initial tariff is high and/or the institutional quality of the country
is low
