A league of their own: services exporters – a developing country perspective

This paper provides a firm-level portrait of services exporters along with goods exporters in a developing country. Current findings of firm-level services trade literature suggest that the stylized facts of goods trade apply to services trade as well for a set of developed countries. This paper investigates if similar results hold for a developing country, Turkey, for the period 2003–2008. Most results lend support to the evidence found in the previous literature. However, the analysis of Turkish data shows that firms that export both goods and services are larger than those exporting goods or services only while multinationals that sell only goods are bigger than multinationals exporting both goods and services or those exporting only services.     

A method for calculating export supply and import demand elasticities

This article has a dual aim. First, it sets out to underline a learning-by-exporting effect in Spanish firms between 1991 and 2002. It further seeks to outline the conditions allowing firms to benefit from these spillover effects. Using a propensity score matching method, a group of firms having entered the export market (treatment group) is compared with a similar group of non-exporting firms (control group), and difference-in-differences regressions are carried out. The results show a cumulative productivity differential of 32% for the first four years of exporting, with continuous improvement in productivity. After three years of exporting, productivity gain is still approximately 10%. This study shows that increases in capacity utilisation and competitive pressure from foreign markets are insufficient to explain this causal link between exporting and total factor productivity (TFP). It is thus possible to deduce the presence of a learning-by-exporting effect, benefiting firms with sufficiently qualified employees and which are already engaged in international relations (due to foreign suppliers and/or foreign equity participation).     

Do foreign workers reduce trade barriers? Microeconomic evidence

This paper provides evidence that foreign workers reduce firms’ trade costs and thus increase the probability that firms export. This informs both the literature on trade costs and the microeconomic literature on firms’ export behaviour. We identify the nationality of each worker in a large sample of German establishments and relate this to the exporting behaviour of these establishments. We allow for the possible endogeneity of an establishment's workforce by instrumenting the share of foreign workers with the regional distribution of foreign workers in the wider labour market. We find a significant effect of worker nationality on exporting which is not driven by the industrial, occupational or locational concentration of migrants. The effect is much stronger for senior occupations, who are more likely to have a role in exporting decisions by the establishment. The relationship is also stronger when we consider exports to particular regions and workers from these regions, consistent with a gravity model in which trade flows from country i to j are a function of migrants from j in i.     

Services trade and credit frictions: Evidence with matched bank–firm data

The effects of credit supply shocks on the exports of services are not clear a priori. On the one hand, services need lower initial investment in physical capital than manufacturing. On the other hand, competitiveness for exporting services requires investments in intangible capital and in product customisation that may be subject to credit frictions. Using Italian matched bank–firm data and focusing on the sovereign debt crisis, we find an elasticity of services exports to credit supply, between 0.3 and 0.4. The effects of credit shocks are especially relevant for firms exporting complex services to countries with weaker institutions and for services that are not the main product of the firms. Overall, our results suggest that credit supply plays a relevant role for exporting services during crises.     

国际市场进入模式选择与企业异质性：一个文献综述

生产率差异是决定企业国际市场进入模式选择的重要因素。本文通过梳理近年来异质性企业贸易与投资文献,阐释了企业如何在贸易、水平型FDI、垂直型FDI和复合型FDI之间进行选择以及选择FDI的企业会采取何种进入方式的问题。现有的异质性企业贸易与投资模型较好地解释了发达国家的经验事实,但在企业异质性的来源、消费者需求结构以及发展中国家的市场扭曲等方面,异质性企业贸易和投资模型仍需进一步深入研究。     

Effects of Economic Recession on Export Activity

Abstract

Since 1920 there has been 15 economic recessions and expansions in the US and on average recessions have lasted just over a year. The most recent recession was that of 1989–1991, which, with the increased globalization of business, did not spare Australia. Using a geo-business model the research investigates changes in export managers' perceptions on a number of variables before and during the last recession. It also considers whether recession in the domestic market acted as a motivator for Australian firms to enter export markets. Data is analyzed from a survey that attracted respondents from 233 export firms. Findings are presented and implications for theory development and government and policy makers are discussed. Limitations are noted and directions for future research are indicated.     

Is competition from China so special?

Competition from China is perceived as particularly damaging. We study whether this is true for firm performance. Using the universe of Spanish export transactions, we find that an increase in competition from China does not have a more damaging effect on export revenues, prices and number of exported products than an equally sized increase in competition from other countries. We document, though, that Chinese competition raises the probability that a firm ceases to export a good to a destination more than competition from other countries. This effect declines over time. We document an omitted variable bias in studies focusing only on Chinese competition, even when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity of destinations for different products within firms.     

贸易增长二元边际的演化与检验:一个文献综述

二元边际研究是源于微观经济学的结构性分解方法,将该方法用于国际贸易分析,对贸易流量进行集约边际与扩展边际上的分解,有助于深刻理解贸易变化的内在结构、决定机制、各种影响因素及福利效果,从而可以为现实贸易政策的制定提供依据和指导。文章从理论根源、概念提出与发展、二元边际的决定因素以及二元边际的实证检验四个方面综述代表性文献,指出该领域的研究重点、难点、研究前沿以及不足。     

Regional economic integration and multinational firm strategies

This paper analyzes the effects of regional economic integrations on investment patterns among multinational firms. We develop a model in which heterogeneous firms decide on the optimal foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies for serving trade-integrated regions consisting of asymmetric countries: developed and developing nations. Following reduced trade costs within the trade-integrated region, our model shows that integrating into a regional economic zone affects firms with relatively low productivity levels to enter developing nation within the region via complex FDI – a firm activity of engaging in multiple types of FDI. Specifically, we show that depending on the size of the region respective to the home country, complex FDI involves different investment patterns. Using Korean firm- and plant-level data, we specify a binary choice model to link firms’ choice of FDI strategies with their productivity levels and trade-integrated regions. Our empirical results are consistent with the theoretical implications.