Our research project aims to contribute to this literature in three ways. First, we want to analyze how international trade affects the variety of domestic production and what this implies for the total variety of products available to the consumer. Second, we plan to investigate the relationship between international trade in intermediates and the productivity of domestic firms. Third, we want to study how the access to an increased variety of finished and intermediate products from abroad affects the variety of exports of firms and countries. In all of this work we focus on empirical analyses.