Abstract
In this paper, we present a standard quality ladders endogenous growth model with one significant new assumption: it takes time for firms to learn how to export. It is known that the welfare gains from trade liberalization implied by a large class of models like the Armington gravity model, the Krugman model, and the Melitz model are small. Our quality ladders model is consistent with a number of firm-level stylized facts from the heterogeneous firms trade literature and is, in addition, capable of generating very large welfare gains from trade liberalization.
