IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_577_20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The determinants of service export behaviour in Italian non-financial firms

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Moro

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Enrico Tosti

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

This paper analyses the main drivers of Italian service exports using firm-level data. A gravity equation, augmented with firm characteristics and FDI variables, is estimated using a panel of Italian exporters constructed by merging two datasets, the first on international trade in services and the second on FDI relationships, both used to compile the Italian balance of payments. After presenting a formal justification for the presence of FDI variables in the gravity equation, the model is estimated using a panel composed of non-financial firms exporting services other than travel, transport and processing in the period from 2013 to 2018. The econometric analysis shows that FDI is, among the standard drivers of exports (firm size and productivity, foreign demand, trade costs), a significant variable that positively affects Italian firms’ exports of services, pointing to complementarity rather than to substitution. This evidence suggests that a significant component of trade in services includes intra-group transactions.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Moro & Enrico Tosti, 2020. "The determinants of service export behaviour in Italian non-financial firms," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 577, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_577_20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2020-0577/QEF_577_20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Markus Kelle & Jörn Kleinert & Horst Raff & Farid Toubal, 2013. "Cross-border and Foreign Affiliate Sales of Services: Evidence from German Microdata," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(11), pages 1373-1392, November.
    2. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1707-1721, September.
    3. Carmen Fillat-Castejon & Joseph Francis Francois & Julia Maria Woerz, 2008. "Cross-Border Trade and FDI in Services," Economics working papers 2008-12, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    4. Heckemeyer, Jost H. & Overesch, Michael, 2013. "Multinationals' profit response to tax differentials: Effect size and shifting channels," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-045, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    5. Breinlich, Holger & Criscuolo, Chiara, 2011. "International trade in services: A portrait of importers and exporters," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 188-206, July.
    6. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/6apm7lruv088iagm4rv2c33jtg is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Elisabeth Christen & Michael Pfaffermayr & Yvonne Wolfmayr, 2019. "Decomposing service exports adjustments along the intensive and extensive margin at the firm‐level," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 155-183, February.
    8. Thomas Tørsløv & Ludvig Wier & Gabriel Zucman, 2023. "The Missing Profits of Nations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(3), pages 1499-1534.
    9. Thierry Mayer & Gianmarco Ottaviano, 2007. "The happy few: the internationalisation of European firms New facts based on firm-level evidence," Working Papers hal-03459258, HAL.
    10. Elhanan Helpman & Marc J. Melitz & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2004. "Export Versus FDI with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 300-316, March.
    11. Stefanie Haller & Jože Damijan & Ville Kaitila & Črt Kostevc & Mika Maliranta & Emmanuel Milet & Daniel Mirza & Matija Rojec, 2014. "Trading firms in the services sectors: comparable evidence from four EU countries," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 150(3), pages 471-505, August.
    12. Andrea Ariu & Elena Biewen & Sven Blank & Guillaume Gaulier & María Jesus González & Philipp Meinen & Daniel Mirza & Cesar Martín & Patry Tello, 2019. "Firm heterogeneity and aggregate business services exports: Micro evidence from Belgium, France, Germany and Spain," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(2), pages 564-589, February.
    13. Nikolaj Malchow-Møller & Jakob Munch & Jan Skaksen, 2015. "Services trade, goods trade and productivity growth: evidence from a population of private sector firms," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 151(2), pages 197-229, May.
    14. Thomas Chaney, 2008. "Distorted Gravity: The Intensive and Extensive Margins of International Trade," Post-Print hal-03579844, HAL.
    15. Thierry Mayer & Gianmarco Ottaviano, 2008. "The Happy Few: The Internationalisation of European Firms," Intereconomics: Review of European Economic Policy, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics;Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), vol. 43(3), pages 135-148, May.
    16. Lodefalk, Magnus & Kyvik Nordås, Hildegunn, 2017. "Trading firms and trading costs in services: The case of Sweden," Working Papers 2017:4, Örebro University, School of Business.
    17. Iza Lejárraga & Harald Oberhofer, 2015. "Performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises in services trade: evidence from French firms," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 673-702, October.
    18. Evdokia Moïsé & Florian Le Bris, 2013. "Trade Costs - What Have We Learned?: A Synthesis Report," OECD Trade Policy Papers 150, OECD Publishing.
    19. Markusen, James R, 1989. "Trade in Producer Services and in Other Specialized Intermediate Inputs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 85-95, March.
    20. Carolina Lennon, 2008. "Trade in services: Cross-border trade vs commercial presence. Evidence of complementarity," PSE Working Papers halshs-00586217, HAL.
    21. repec:hal:wpspec:info:hdl:2441/10147 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Rudrani Bhattacharya & Ila Patnaik & Ajay Shah, 2012. "Export Versus FDI in Services," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 61-78, January.
    23. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10147 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Alessandro Moro & Enrico Tosti, 2019. "Italy’s international trade in services: a story of missed growth?," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 519, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    25. Mr. Prakash Loungani & Mr. Saurabh Mishra & Mr. Chris Papageorgiou & Ke Wang, 2017. "World Trade in Services: Evidence from A New Dataset," IMF Working Papers 2017/077, International Monetary Fund.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rouzet, Dorothée & Benz, Sebastian & Spinelli, Francesca, 2017. "Trading Firms and Trading Costs in Services: Firm-Level Analysis," Conference papers 332911, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    2. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "International Trade and Firm Performance: A Survey of Empirical Studies since 2006," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 2, pages 43-87, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Sebastian Benz & Dorothée Rouzet & Francesca Spinelli, 2020. "Firm heterogeneity in services trade: Micro‐level evidence from eight OECD countries," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(11), pages 2905-2931, November.
    4. Stefano Federico & Enrico Tosti, 2017. "Exporters and Importers of Services: Firm-Level Evidence on Italy," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(10), pages 2078-2096, October.
    5. Matthieu Crozet & Keith Head & Thierry Mayer, 2012. "Quality Sorting and Trade: Firm-level Evidence for French Wine," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(2), pages 609-644.
    6. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2012. "The Empirics of Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 283-313, July.
    7. Melitz, Marc J. & Redding, Stephen J., 2014. "Heterogeneous Firms and Trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 1-54, Elsevier.
    8. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/10148 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Davide Castellani & Francesco Serti & Chiara Tomasi, 2010. "Firms in International Trade: Importers’ and Exporters’ Heterogeneity in Italian Manufacturing Industry," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(3), pages 424-457, March.
    10. Stefano Iandolo & Anna Ferragina, 2021. "International activities and innovation: Evidence from Italy with a special regressor approach," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(11), pages 3300-3325, November.
    11. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2018. "Global Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 565-619, June.
    12. Ariu, Andrea & Breinlich, Holger & Corcos, Gregory & Mion, Giordano, 2019. "The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 173-188.
    13. Fontagné, Lionel & Orefice, Gianluca & Piermartini, Roberta & Rocha, Nadia, 2015. "Product standards and margins of trade: Firm-level evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 29-44.
    14. Armando Silva & Oscar Afonso & Ana Africano, 2013. "Economic performance and international trade engagement: the case of Portuguese manufacturing firms," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 10(4), pages 521-547, December.
    15. Gregory Corcos & Massimo Del Gatto & Giordano Mion & Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano, 2012. "Productivity and Firm Selection: Quantifying the ‘New’ Gains from Trade," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 122(561), pages 754-798, June.
    16. Bricongne, Jean-Charles & Delpeuch, Samuel & Lopez-Forero, Margarita, 2023. "Productivity slowdown and tax havens: Where is measured value creation?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    17. Holger Görg & Liza Jabbour, 2016. "Availability of Business Services and Outward Investment: Evidence from French Firms," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 797-819, September.
    18. Harach, Monika & Rodriguez-Crespo, Ernesto, 2014. "Foreign direct investment and trade: A bi-directional gravity approach," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 467, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    19. Henk Kox & Hugo Rojas-Romagosa, 2010. "Exports and Productivity Selection Effects for Dutch Firms," De Economist, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 295-322, September.
    20. Andre Jungmittag, 2019. "Service trade restrictiveness and internationalisation of retail trade," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 293-333, April.
    21. Łukasz Matuszczak, 2019. "Międzynarodowy handel usługami polskich przedsiębiorstw," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 1, pages 47-67.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    trade in services; firm-level data; gravity model; FDI; panel data; firm heterogeneity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • L80 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - General
    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • C51 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Model Construction and Estimation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_577_20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.