IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucn/wpaper/200922.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Importing, exporting and productivity in Irish manufacturing

Author

Listed:
  • Fergal McCann

Abstract

The impact of international trade on firm productivity is tested by accounting for firms' import as well as export status for a large panel of Irish manufacturing firms. Two-way traders and exporters-only are found to be the most productive firms, with a significant gap between them and importersonly and non-traders. tfp is calculated using a modified version of the Olley and Pakes (1996) estimator, taking account of a four-category trade status. Selection of the most productive firms into exporting or importing is not found in any robust sense. Fixed effcts, as well as Propensity Score Matching with Difference in Differences, are used to calculate productivity improvements from entering into international trade. These improvements are found to be highly contingent on export status, with import status being unimportant. The key finding of the paper is that the gains from trade, for Ireland at least, appear to lie on the export side. Interestingly, quitting trade leads to a mirror image effect to that of entry for all trade statuses.

Suggested Citation

  • Fergal McCann, 2009. "Importing, exporting and productivity in Irish manufacturing," Working Papers 200922, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucn:wpaper:200922
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10197/2620
    File Function: First version, 2009
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Svetlana Batrakova & Ronald Davies, 2012. "Is there an environmental benefit to being an exporter? Evidence from firm-level data," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 148(3), pages 449-474, September.
    2. Lastauskas, Povilas, 2013. "Europe's revolving doors: Import competition and endogenous firm entry institutions," Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers 464, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    3. Dalgic, Basak & Fazlioglu, Burcu & Gasiorek, Michael, 2015. "Costs of trade and self-selection into exporting and importing: The case of Turkish manufacturing firms," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 9, pages 1-28.
    4. Umar Abbas Ibrahim & Ndidi Mildred Ifeyinwa, 2020. "Effect of bank lending on the growth of selected SMEs in Nigeria," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 237-243, July.
    5. Marco Grazzi & Chiara Tomasi, 2016. "Indirect exporters and importers," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(2), pages 251-281, May.
    6. Robert J. R. Elliott & Liza Jabbour & Liyun Zhang, 2016. "Firm productivity and importing: Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(3), pages 1086-1124, August.
    7. Svetlana Batrakova, 2012. "Does industry concentration matter for pollution haven effects?," GRI Working Papers 90, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    8. Nakhoda, Aadil, 2012. "The influence of financial leverage of firms on their international trading activities," MPRA Paper 35765, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. 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.
    10. Dong Xuan Nguyen, 2023. "Trade and employment in Vietnam: how firms' trade matters," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 37(1), pages 20-38, May.
    11. Smeets, Valerie & Warzynski, Frederic, 2013. "Estimating productivity with multi-product firms, pricing heterogeneity and the role of international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 237-244.
    12. Luke Emeka Okafor & Mita Bhattacharya & Harry Bloch, 2017. "Imported Intermediates, Absorptive Capacity and Productivity: Evidence from Ghanaian Manufacturing Firms," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(2), pages 369-392, February.
    13. Jörn Kleinert & Nico Zorell, 2010. "Export-Magnification Effect of Offshoring," IAW Discussion Papers 63, Institut für Angewandte Wirtschaftsforschung (IAW).
    14. Armando Silva & Óscar Afonso & Ana Paula Africano, 2010. "Do Portuguese manufacturing firms self select to exports?," FEP Working Papers 371, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    15. Smeets, Valérie & Warzynski, Frédéric, 2010. "Learning by Exporting, Importing or Both? Estimating productivity with multi-product firms, pricing heterogeneity and the role of international trade," Working Papers 10-13, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    16. Piotr Gabrielczak & Agnieszka Klysik-Uryszek, 2014. "Import zaopatrzeniowy i inwestycyjny a perspektywy uczenia sie przedsiebiorstw przemyslowych z wojewodztwa lodzkiego / Import of intermediate and capital goods and learning perspectives for manufactur," International Economics, University of Lodz, Faculty of Economics and Sociology, issue 5, pages 45-59, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Trade orientation; heterogeneous firms; Productivity; International trade; Manufacturing industries--Ireland; Industrial productivity; Ireland--Commerce;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    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:ucn:wpaper:200922. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Nicolas Clifton (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/educdie.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.