Recent economic literature suggests the importance of sunk costs and hysteresis in explaining export patterns in international trade. To explore their empirical importance, we present a new conceptual framework that distinguishes six different types of exporter behaviour, and apply this framework to a unique longitudinal data set on Irish manufacturing. Our analysis allows us to identify significant numbers of manufacturers who engage in ?exporter re-switching behaviour?. The magnitude of these numbers leads us to question the widespread importance of sunk costs. In response to export-market shocks, we find strong evidence of both heterogeneous exporter responses and hysteresis.
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Paper provided by Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in its series Papers with number
WP196.
Length: 21 pages Date of creation: Jul 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp196
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Find related papers by JEL classification: E32 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Business Fluctuations; Cycles F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Country and Industry Studies of Trade
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References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
J Bradford Jensen & Andrew B Bernard, 2001.
"Why Some Firms Export,"
Working Papers
01-05, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
[Downloadable!]
Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen, 2001.
"Why Some Firms Export,"
NBER Working Papers
8349, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)