The Role of Product-Level Dynamics in Export Growth and Productivity: Evidence from Estonia

Recent empirical studies of international trade have stressed that firm-level decisions about the number of export products or markets are an important margin of adjustment in response to globalization and changes in economic conditions. We investigate how decisions about the export product mix are associated with aggregate export dynamics and productivity of firms. We use detailed data on product and export market levels for the full population of Estonia's firms. Decomposition analysis of trade flows shows that both the relative importance of firms' beginning to export products and the role of product-level churning (firms' adding and dropping of products) in total Estonian export growth increases significantly after accession to the European Union in 2004. We show that concentration on core competence products has a rather different association with productivity of firms in different-size groups. Large firms with a large number of different types of export products gain, on average, in terms of productivity from concentrating their export sales on their core export products. There is no such general regularity in the case of small firms.