IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/
MyIDEAS: Login to save this paper or follow this series

Are low-productive exporters marginal exporters? Evidence from Germany

Author Info

  • Joachim Wagner

    ()

    (Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany)

Abstract

A stylized fact from the emerging literature on the micro-econometrics of international trade and a central implication of the heterogeneous firm models from the new new trade theory is that exporters are more productive than non-exporters. It is argued that this exporter productivity premium is due to extra cost of exporting that can be covered profitably by more productive firms only. Germany is a case in point - exporting firms from manufacturing industries are more productive than non-exporting firms from the same 4-digit industry both on average and over the whole productivity distribution. However, many firms from the lower end of this distribution are exporters. This paper report that these low-productivity exporters are not marginal exporters defined according to the share of exports in total sales, or export participation over time, or the number of goods exported, or the number of countries exported to.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.

File URL: http://www.leuphana.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Forschungseinrichtungen/ifvwl/WorkingPapers/wp_263_Upload.pdf
Download Restriction: no

Paper provided by University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics in its series Working Paper Series in Economics with number 263.

as
in new window

Length: 26 pages
Date of creation: Feb 2013
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:lue:wpaper:263
Contact details of provider: Web page: http://leuphana.de/institute/ivwl.html

Keywords: Exports; productivity; low-productive exporters;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:

as in new window
  1. Lucia Foster & John Haltiwanger & Chad Syverson, 2008. "Reallocation, Firm Turnover, and Efficiency: Selection on Productivity or Profitability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 394-425, March.
  2. Stephen Redding, 2010. "Theories of heterogeneous firms and trade," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 48908, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  3. Bernard, Andrew B. & Jensen, J Bradford & Redding, Stephen J. & Schott, Peter K., 2011. "The Empirics of Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade," CEPR Discussion Papers 8677, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
  4. Juan Carlos Hallak & Jagadeesh Sivadasan, 2009. "Firms' Exporting Behavior under Quality Constraints," NBER Working Papers 14928, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  5. Eric J. Bartelsman & Mark Doms, 2000. "Understanding productivity: lessons from longitudinal microdata," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2000-19, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
  6. Chad Syverson, 2011. "What Determines Productivity?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 326-65, June.
  7. Elhanan Helpman, 2006. "Trade, FDI, and the Organization of Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 589-630, September.
  8. Bernard, A. & Wagner, J., 1996. "Exports and Success in German Manufacturing," Working papers 96-10, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  9. 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.
  10. Joachim Wagner, 2008. "A note on why more West than East German firms export," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 363-370, December.
  11. Helpman, Elhanan, 2011. "Understanding Global Trade," Economics Books, Harvard University Press, number 9780674060784.
  12. David Greenaway & Richard Kneller, 2007. "Firm heterogeneity, exporting and foreign direct investment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(517), pages F134-F161, 02.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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

as in new window


Cited by:

  1. Wagner, Joachim, 2014. "Low-productive exporters are high-quality exporters. Evidence from Germany," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 341, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
  2. Joachim Wagner, 2014. "New Data from Official Statistics for Imports and Exports of Goods by German Enterprises," Working Paper Series in Economics 306, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Access and download statistics

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:lue:wpaper:263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Joachim Wagner)

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 references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link 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 profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

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

This information is provided to you by IDEAS at the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis using RePEc data.