The Impact of Exporting and Export Destination on Manufacturing Wages: Evidence for Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper investigates wage effects of trade status of African firms. Using data for manufacturing firms, we find a positive overall association between individual earnings and export status. Moreover, the skill wage premium in exporting firms is significantly higher. These results are consistent with either trade inducing higher wages in the exporting country, or with more productive (higher wage) firms self‐selecting into exporting. The results are not robust, however, to disaggregation by export destination. Exporting to outside Africa generates a negative wage premium whereas exporting to African markets yields a positive premium in export firms of the exporting country. This suggests that there is a disciplining effect on the wages of exporting firms only when exporting is to more competitive markets.     

Local export spillovers in France

This paper investigates the presence of local export spillovers on both the extensive (the decision to start exporting) and the intensive (the export volume) margins of trade, using data on French individual export flows, at the product-level and by destination country, between 1998 and 2003. We investigate whether the individual decision to start exporting and exported volume are influenced by the presence of nearby product and/or destination specific exporters, using a gravity-type equation estimated at the firm-level. Spillovers are considered at a fine geographical level corresponding to employment areas (348 in France). We control for the new economic geography-type selection of firms into agglomerated areas, and for the local price effects of firms agglomeration. Results show evidence of the presence of export spillovers on the export decision but not on the exported volume. We interpret this as a first evidence of export spillovers acting through the fixed rather than the variable cost. Spillovers on the decision to start exporting are stronger when specific, by product and destination, and are not significant when considered on all products-all destinations. Moreover, export spillovers exhibit a spatial decay within France: the effect of other exporting firms on the export decision is stronger within employment areas and declines with distance.     

Effect of the global financial meltdown on India’s aggregate export volumes

ABSTRACT

This paper sets up a demand-supply model to analyse India’s export performance (in terms of volumes rather than values) between 2000Q1–2014Q4. The main objective is to determine the impact of the financial meltdown of 2008 on India’s export performance. During the meltdown period, decline in price by India’s competitors in the international market resulted in (1) loss of competitiveness of India’s export goods and (2) a complete breakdown of the price mechanism affecting India’s export demand. Though export supply was not significantly affected by the meltdown episode we find evidence that exporting firms turned towards the domestic market to cope with the loss in export. The meltdown episode began to significantly affect India’s export demand and supply equations from 2009Q3. The demand and supply equations after that period became so unstable that ‘nothing worked’ for India’s exporters as they tried to counter the decline in export. Hence there was ample reason for them to panic and seek the government’s help. Government policies aimed at boosting export demand did have a positive impact on India’s export performance. Government policies to boost export supply had no impact except being palliative for the exporters at their moment of crisis     

Investment climate,foreign networks and exporting – evidence from Africa

This paper investigates the impact of investment climate variables and foreign networks on the exporting decisions of African firms. We use data from the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys for over 7000 firms in 24 Sub-Saharan African countries. The results highlight the crucial role of the access to, and the quality of, investment climate characteristics – infrastructure, external finance and telecommunications for Sub-Saharan African firms’ exporting propensities. Our results show that improving the investment climate to the level of best performers in the sample will considerably increase the propensity of domestic firms to export. The paper also finds that foreign networks have a significantly positive impact on firms’ export propensities.     

On the relationship between intermediate input imports and export quality in China

This paper studies the connection between intermediate input imports and firms’ export quality using firm‐level data from 2000 to 2007. Our regression results show that intermediate input imports promote manufacturing firms’ export quality through ‘variety effects’ and ‘innovation effects’, though the effects are significantly different among firms with different characteristics, and the magnitude of these effects differs across import sources and the quality of imported intermediate inputs themselves. Moreover, we find that a good institutional environment is conducive to the strengthening of the positive influence of intermediate input imports on export quality. Furthermore, the dynamic decomposition demonstrates that the reallocation effect is the key force through which imported inputs boost industrial aggregate quality growth. Taken together, these results suggest that product upgrading facilitated by quality embedded in imported intermediate inputs, a good institutional environment and market share reallocation help Chinese firms to improve the quality of their export products.     

A theory on the role of wholesalers in international trade based on economies of scope

This paper offers a theoretical foundation for the existence of wholesalers and other intermediaries in international trade and analyzes their role in an economy with heterogeneous manufacturing firms and fixed costs of exporting. Wholesalers are assumed to possess a technology such that they can buy manufacturing goods domestically and sell in foreign markets and they can, unlike manufacturers, export more than one good. A wholesaler therefore faces an additional fixed cost, which increases in the number of goods it handles. The presence of wholesale firms leads to productivity sorting. The most productive firms export on their own by paying a fixed cost, but a range of firms with intermediate productivity levels export through international wholesalers. A higher fixed cost of exporting to a destination means that wholesalers handle: (i) a higher share of total export volumes to this destination and (ii) a higher share of the exported product scope (i.e., the number of exported products) to this destination. A higher fixed cost of exporting gives wholesalers a larger role, since these can spread the fixed cost across more than one good. The wholesale technology therefore exhibits economies of scope. An empirical analysis using Swedish firm‐level data supports the main assumption and predictions of the model.     

An empirical study of firm productivity growth based on the dynamic selection model: Effects on the recent decline in Korean exports

Export and productivity growth in the Korean manufacturing sector have both been slow since 2011. To understand this relationship, we examine the productivity distributions of manufacturing firms in Korea by applying the dynamic selection model developed by Sampson (2016). The fitness of the dynamic selection model suggests that a slowdown in the market selection mechanism may be a crucial contributor to the stagnant growth in the productivity. In addition, we find that the productivity difference between exporting firms and non-exporting firms has decreased and the low productivity growth of firms exporting to non-foreign affiliates has contributed to this trend.     

TARIFF POLICY AND WELFARE IN AN INTERNATIONAL DUOPOLY WITH CONSUMER‐FRIENDLY INITIATIVE

The purpose of this paper is to explore how strategic tariff policy and welfare are affected by the consumer‐friendly initiative of foreign exporting firms. We define a firm that is consumer‐friendly or non‐profit‐based if it considers both its own profit and consumer surplus. This paper extends Brander and Spencer by taking the consideration of consumer‐friendly firms into an international duopoly, and within such context examining the tariff policy and welfare. The consumer‐friendly initiative that leads to trade liberalization is a ‘Win‐Win‐Win’ solution in the sense that it is not only beneficial for foreign exporting firms, but also for the government and consumers of the importing country.     

Decentralization of firms in a country with weak institutions: Evidence from Russia

The paper studies evidence from Russian firms to explore whether the decentralization of firms can be successful under weak institutions. The paper distinguishes between two strategies for decentralization of firms in an environment with weak institutions: decentralization of decision-making authority to professionals hired through open competition (real decentralization) and decentralization to people hired through connections (cautious decentralization). The paper argues that real decentralization has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of firms and therefore can have economic payoff for firms even under weak institutions. However, the higher the distortionary effect of corruption on fair market competition in an environment with weak institutions, the lower the firms’ returns to being economically efficient. Therefore, the lower the returns to real decentralization, and, hence, the firms’ willingness to really decentralize. The empirical analysis presented in the paper demonstrates that really decentralized Russian firms are, on average, more successful compared to other firms in a range of activities: they are more likely to invest, to bring to the market innovative products that are new to the Russian or global market, and to export. The gap between really decentralized and other firms in the probability of investment and introduction of new products to the market is very substantial under low or moderate levels of corruption. However, the gap shrinks as corruption grows and disappears under very high levels of corruption. Correspondingly, real decentralization is less popular in Russian regions with higher corruption.     

不完全信息条件下的出口与信贷约束——来自中国的理论与证据

文章讨论了在"银行-企业"不完全信息条件下,国内企业和出口企业面对的信贷约束为何不同.由于企业的生产率等信息对于银行而言属于内部信息,银行为了保持激励相容,会向企业提供少于企业所需最优数量的贷款.这种贷款的约束构成了企业面对的信贷约束.出口企业的运输时间越长,相比国内企业就会面临更紧的信贷约束.使用中国企业的数据验证这一理论,我们发现,对中国企业而言,出口业务占比越大、运输时间越长、生产率差异越大,企业面临的信贷约束也就越紧.     

Do domestic firms learn to export from multinationals?

Attracting inward investment is a major preoccupation of policymakers worldwide, and a wide range of instruments, including direct subventions, are deployed to attract multinational enterprises (MNEs). Intervention is predicated on the assumption that there are direct productivity spillovers associated with the presence of MNEs and the policy of attracting them is targeted at capturing these externalities. Yet robust evidence on direct spillovers is hard to find. An underexplored indirect channel for productivity spillovers is via exports. Exporting firms are more productive than nonexporting firms. Thus, if the presence of MNEs results in more indigenous firms exporting, an indirect productivity spillover will result. In this paper, we identify possible transmission mechanisms for export spillovers and test for their existence on a large panel of firms in the UK. Our results confirm positive spillover effects from MNEs on the decision to export of UK-owned firms as well as on their export propensity.     

Corruption and growth: Historical evidence, 1790–2010

We use a newly assembled indicator of corruption from Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) to examine the effects of corruption on economic growth. The V-Dem indicator is coded for almost all contemporary and historical polities since the year 1900 and, for some countries, since the French Revolution. This global dataset allows us to exploit long-run, slow-moving variation within countries for identification, circumventing many of the difficulties faced by previous studies based on cross-section data or short panels. We present robust evidence of a negative effect of corruption on steady-state growth. Yet, we find that corruption interacts with political regime type, giving rise to heterogeneous effects. In particular, corruption is found to be significantly more deleterious for growth in democracies than in autocracies. Since corruption tends to be decentralised in democracies and centralised in autocracies, these findings are in line with theories of the ‘industrial organisation’ of corruption. We find little to no evidence that institutional weaknesses along other dimensions (state capacity, regulatory quality, property rights protection) make corruption any less harmful for growth, casting doubt on the thesis that corruption may ‘grease the wheels’ of dysfunctional institutions. Our findings provide a rationale to target anti-corruption efforts to young democracies.     

企业出口与生产率的关系——基于中国工业企业数据的实证研究

采用1998—2007年中国工业企业数据,对出口与生产率的关系进行了再探讨,具体研究了出口企业是否具有更高的生产率、企业在做出口决策的过程中是否存在自我选择机制以及出口行为本身是否能促进企业生产率的增长。研究结果显示:当用TFP衡量生产率时,企业出口决策中存在自我选择机制,因此出口企业的生产率相对较高——这与异质企业贸易模型的预期结果一致;当用劳动生产率(人均附加值)衡量企业生产率时,则"生产率悖论"存在,即出口者的生产率反而较低;当企业刚进入出口市场时,其生产率会经历短期的快速增长,但从长期来看,出口对企业生产率增长的作用在整体上是负向的。     

THE IMPACT OF EXPORTING AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT ON PRODUCT INNOVATION: EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE MANUFACTURERS

To understand the drivers of product innovation at the firm level, I compare the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) and exporting on product innovation using a rich firm‐level database of manufacturing and industrial enterprises. The article focuses on product innovation, as it is vital to economic development. Estimates from linear regressions and propensity score matching tests show that learning‐by‐exporting is a stronger predictor of product innovation. Firms that receive foreign investment also tend to engage in more product innovation, but not at the same level as the firms that export. Additional tests confirm that as they start and stop exporting, firms change their patterns of investment in the drivers of product innovation—fixed capital and research. (JEL D22, F14, F23, L25, O31)     

Export market participation with sunk costs and firm heterogeneity

In this article we investigate the importance of sunk costs, firm characteristics and spillovers from nearby exporters on a firm's decision to participate in exporting. The empirical analysis involves the estimation of a nonstructural, discrete choice, dynamic model with firm heterogeneity. By using panel data for Estonian companies from 1994 to 1999 we find that: (i) both sunk costs and observable firm characteristics are important determinants of export market participation; (ii) previous history matters, in that, if a firm has been exporting the previous period or the period before, it significantly increases the likelihood of the firm exporting in the current period; (iii) larger firms with high capital intensity and foreign ownership are more likely to be exporters; (iv) operating in an export-oriented industry increases a firm's likelihood of exporting.     

Productivity change and externalities: empirical evidence from Hungary

This paper contributes to the analysis of the impact of externalities on the host country’s total factor productivity by taking into account different dimensions of spillover effects. Namely, engagement in exporting and foreign ownership is generally perceived as being beneficial to individual firms and the economy as a whole. The approach used in the current research accounts for different internal as well as external factors that individual firms face and evaluates the effect on changes in productivity, technology as well as the efficiency of domestic firms. The empirical analysis focuses on Hungary. While the country leads the group of post-socialist countries in the amount of attracted foreign direct investments (FDI) the effect of this policy on the economy remains unclear. The research finds that different externalities play a different role in productivity, technological and efficiency change in different types of firms and sectors of the economy.     

Investment climate and firm productivity: an application to Vietnamese manufacturing firms

The fundamental aspect of a national competitive advantage is a good investment climate. Understanding the role of the investment climate in generating firm productivity has received extensive attention by policymakers and economists in many countries. The article studies the effect of different dimensions of the investment climate on firm productivity. Using a large dataset of Vietnamese manufacturing firms, the article finds that deficiencies in the investment climate are prejudicial to firm productivity and competition. Furthermore, in examining the effect of corruption in association with the quality of the business environment, the study also investigates the possibility that corruption may compensate firms for a bad investment climate or at least may neutralize the negative impact of inefficient government regulations. In other words, corruption acts as ‘speed money’ to improve the efficacy of the provision of public services or provides leeway for entrepreneurs to bypass the inefficient regulations. This situation, however, is extremely harmful to the economy in the long run because it distorts the market and erodes the incentives for productive investments. Developing countries therefore need to put much more effort into institutional reforms, especially fighting corruption and efficiency in the provision of public goods and services.     

Trapped in Informality: The Big Role of Small Firms in Russia’s Statist-patrimonial Capitalism

Manifestations of patrimonialism such as corruption and state predation on business are widespread in many emerging economies. This paper presents the case of Russian political economy, dubbed ‘statist-patrimonial capitalism’, which is marked by state threats to private property rights through bureaucratic extortion or legal harassment. How can we explain the resilience of Russia’s statist-patrimonial capitalism? Predominant accounts focus on the lack of institutional constraints on state predation. The paper offers a different perspective by exploring the often-overlooked contribution of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). First, statistical data show a steady rise of SMEs in the 2000s despite increasing state predation, suggesting that SMEs are not simply subjugated by the state. Second, in-depth interviews with Russian entrepreneurs reveal that business contributes to the maintenance of the statist-patrimonial system through the mechanism of the ‘informality trap’: firms that choose the informal strategy have difficulties to return to the legal sphere and get stuck in informality. The drivers of informality include firm-specific characteristics, institutional factors and socio-cultural factors dubbed ‘normality’. The mechanism of the ‘informality trap’ highlights the agency of firms in corrupt polities and may be applicable to other emerging economies.     

Information Technology As A Factor Of Production: The Role Of Differences Among Firms

Despite evidence that information technology (IT) has recently become a productive investment for a large cross-section of firms, a number of questions remain. Some of these issues can be addressed by extending the basic production function approach that was applied in earlier work. Specifically, in this short paper we: 1) control for individual firm differences in productivity by employing a ‘firm effects’ specification, 2) consider the more flexible translog specification instead of only the Cobb-Douglas specification, and 3) allow all parameters to vary between various subsectors of the economy.

We find that while ‘firm effects’ may account for as much as half of the productivity benefits imputed to IT in earlier studies, the elasticity of IT remains positive and statistically significant. We also find that the estimates of IT elasticity and marginal product are little-changed when the less restrictive translog production function is employed. Finally, we find only limited evidence of differences in IT's marginal product between manufacturing and services and between the ‘measurable’ and ‘unmeasurable’ sectors of the economy. Surprisingly, we find that the marginal product of IT is at least as high in firms that did not grow during 1988–1992 sample period as it is in firms that grew.     

Determinants of firms’ investment behaviour: a multilevel approach

This article investigates the determinants of firms’ investment behaviour using firm data from 101 developing and emerging economies. A substantial number of firms does not invest in fixed capital or invests little relative to sales revenue. Using a multilevel probit model we study what factors trigger investment, and using a multilevel Heckman selection model we study what factors influence a firm’s investment-to-sales ratio. We find that firms’ investment behaviour has relatively little dependency on a country’s macroeconomic setting. Additionally, we find that, on average, firms that are completely foreign-owned have a relatively lower investment-to-sales ratio. Finally, we find evidence which suggests that the probability of investing is higher for firms located in countries with more control of corruption and we find some evidence which suggests that partially foreign-owned firms located in countries with relatively less corruption have a relatively higher investment-to-sales ratio.