IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/zewdip/13042.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Trade and technology: New evidence on the productivity sorting of firms

Author

Listed:
  • Bertschek, Irene
  • Hogrefe, Jan
  • Rasel, Fabienne

Abstract

Using a unique German firm-level data set, we provide empirical evidence for a productivity sorting along two dimensions: international activity and technology choice. We consider domestic and exporting firms and measure technology choice by firms' actual use of advanced information technology (IT). For manufacturing firms, the observed sorting pattern is consistent with recent theories of heterogeneous firms and technology choice: Only the relatively more productive ones among internationally active firms are also highly technology intensive. For service sector firms we find similar evidence, yet the results seem to depend on the trade cost of certain services. In general, recent theoretical advances regarding trade and technology adoption thus seem to better fit the manufacturing sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Bertschek, Irene & Hogrefe, Jan & Rasel, Fabienne, 2013. "Trade and technology: New evidence on the productivity sorting of firms," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-042, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13042
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/77975/1/755982428.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Benjamin Engelstätter, 2012. "It is not all about performance gains -- enterprise software and innovations," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 223-245, February.
    2. Bernard, Andrew B. & Bradford Jensen, J., 1999. "Exceptional exporter performance: cause, effect, or both?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Marc J. Melitz & Daniel Trefler, 2012. "Gains from Trade When Firms Matter," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 91-118, Spring.
    4. Joachim Wagner, 2012. "Exports, R&D and productivity: a test of the Bustos-model with German enterprise data," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 1942-1948.
    5. Wilhelm Kohler & Marcel Smolka, 2009. "Global Sourcing Decisions and Firm Productivity: Evidence from Spain," CESifo Working Paper Series 2903, CESifo.
    6. Timothy F. Bresnahan & Erik Brynjolfsson & Lorin M. Hitt, 2002. "Information Technology, Workplace Organization, and the Demand for Skilled Labor: Firm-Level Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(1), pages 339-376.
    7. Alla Lileeva & Daniel Trefler, 2010. "Improved Access to Foreign Markets Raises Plant-level Productivity…For Some Plants," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(3), pages 1051-1099.
    8. Vincenzo Verardi & Joachim Wagner, 2021. "Productivity Premia for German Manufacturing Firms Exporting to the Euro-area and Beyond: First Evidence from Robust Fixed Effects Estimations," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joachim Wagner (ed.), MICROECONOMETRIC STUDIES OF FIRMS’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS Advanced Methods of Analysis and Evidence from German Enterprises, chapter 7, pages 87-109, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Paula Bustos, 2011. "Trade Liberalization, Exports, and Technology Upgrading: Evidence on the Impact of MERCOSUR on Argentinian Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 304-340, February.
    10. Vincenzo Verardi & Christophe Croux, 2009. "Robust regression in Stata," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 9(3), pages 439-453, September.
    11. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    12. Alexander Vogel & Joachim Wagner, 2021. "Robust Estimates of Exporter Productivity Premia in German Business Services Enterprises," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joachim Wagner (ed.), MICROECONOMETRIC STUDIES OF FIRMS’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS Advanced Methods of Analysis and Evidence from German Enterprises, chapter 14, pages 239-263, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fabienne Rasel, 2017. "ICT and global sourcing – evidence for German manufacturing and service firms," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(7), pages 634-660, October.
    2. Stiebale, Joel & Südekum, Jens & Woessner, Nicole, 2020. "Robots and the rise of European superstar firms," DICE Discussion Papers 347, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    3. Capuano, Stella & Hauptmann, Andreas & Schmerer, Hans-Jörg, 2020. "Trade and unions: Does size matter?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 66-75.
    4. Stefano Costa & Federico Sallusti & Claudio Vicarelli & Davide Zurlo, 2022. "Tech on the ROC: export threshold and technology adoption interacted," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1593-1611, December.
    5. Rasel, Fabienne, 2014. "Combining technology and work organization: An analysis of complementarity between IT and decentralization across firms of different size," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-071, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    6. Sakshi Aggarwal & Debashis Chakraborty, 2021. "Which Factors influence Vertical Intra-Industry Trade in India? Empirical Results from Panel Data Analysis," Working Papers 2154, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.
    7. Jens Suedekum & Nicole Woessner, 2019. "Robots & the Rise of European Superstar Firms," European Economy - Discussion Papers 118, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    8. Lüdering, Jochen, 2014. "The measurement of internet availability and quality in the context of the discussion on digital divide," Discussion Papers 65, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Center for international Development and Environmental Research (ZEU).
    9. Rasel, Fabienne, 2013. "Produktivitätsverteilung angesichts von Auslandsaktivität und Technologieintensität," ZEW Wachstums- und Konjunkturanalysen, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, vol. 16(4), pages 10-11.
    10. Fabienne Rasel, 2016. "Combining Information Technology and Decentralized Workplace Organization: SMEs versus Larger Firms," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(2), pages 199-241, July.
    11. Olga N. Buchinskaya & Evgeniy P. Dyatel, 2019. "Influence of high-technology exports and foreign charges for the use of intellectual property on economic growth," Journal of New Economy, Ural State University of Economics, vol. 20(2), pages 114-126, May.

    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. Elhanan Helpman, 2014. "Foreign Trade and Investment: Firm-level Perspectives," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 81(321), pages 1-14, January.
    2. Fabienne Rasel, 2017. "ICT and global sourcing – evidence for German manufacturing and service firms," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(7), pages 634-660, October.
    3. 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..
    4. Cebreros Alfonso, 2019. "The Micro-economics of Export Supply: Firm-Level Evidence from Mexico," Working Papers 2019-02, Banco de México.
    5. Joachim Wagner, 2015. "New Methods for the Analysis of Links between International Firm Activities and Firm Performance: A Practitioner's Guide," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(4), pages 704-715, April.
    6. Naudé, Wim & Gries, Thomas & Bilkic, Natasa, 2015. "Playing the lottery or dressing up? A model of firm-level heterogeneity and the decision to export," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 1-17.
    7. Frederico Oliveira Torres, 2019. "Firm heterogeneity and exports in Portugal - Identifying export potential," GEE Papers 0118, Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia, revised Apr 2019.
    8. Ma, Yue & Tang, Heiwai & Zhang, Yifan, 2014. "Factor Intensity, product switching, and productivity: Evidence from Chinese exporters," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 349-362.
    9. Marc J. Melitz & Stephen J. Redding, 2021. "Trade and innovation," CEP Discussion Papers dp1777, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    10. Ito, Banri & Xu, Zhaoyuan & Yashiro, Naomitsu, 2015. "Does agglomeration promote internationalization of Chinese firms?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 109-121.
    11. Geoffrey Barrows & Helene Ollivier, 2016. "Emission intensity and firm dynamics: reallocation, product mix, and technology in India," GRI Working Papers 245, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    12. Ulf Lewrick & Lukas Mohler & Rolf Weder, 2014. "When firms and industries matter: understanding the sources of productivity growth," BIS Working Papers 469, Bank for International Settlements.
    13. Reto Foellmi & Stefan Legge & Alexa Tiemann, 2021. "Innovation and trade in the presence of credit constraints," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 1168-1205, November.
    14. Katrin Peters & Monika Schnitzer, 2015. "Trade liberalization and credit constraints: Why opening up may fail to promote convergence," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 1099-1119, August.
    15. Thomas Steinwachs & Erdal Yalcin, 2016. "Stimulating Foreign Direct Investment and International Trade to Generate Employment," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 17(01), pages 17-21, April.
    16. Gnangnon, Sèna Kimm, 2021. "Effect of the Utilization of Non-Reciprocal Trade Preferences offered by the QUAD on Economic Growth in Beneficiary Countries," EconStor Preprints 242848, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    17. Facundo Piguillem & Loris Rubini, 2021. "Do non‐exporters lose from lower trade costs?," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(5), pages 1161-1185, November.
    18. Crinò, Rosario & Bonfiglioli, Alessandra & Gancia, Gino, 2021. "International Trade with Heterogeneous Firms: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 16249, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    19. Idris, Bochra & Saridakis, George & Khan, Zaheer, 2022. "The Effect of Outward and Inward Internationalisation on Different Types of Innovation: Evidence from UK SMEs," Journal of International Management, Elsevier, vol. 28(2).
    20. Rutzer, Christian, 2014. "From the Loser to the Winner - How Trade Liberalization can lead to Leapfrogging between Countries," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100313, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    exports; productivity; sorting; information technology; firm-level data;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production

    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:zbw:zewdip:13042. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/zemande.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.