The role of services for manufacturing firm exports

Manufacturing firms have been increasingly focusing on services, a trend that is evident in their composition of bought-in input and in-house production. The services intensity of firms may affect their productivity and thereby their competitiveness abroad; services are also instrumental in connecting firms to foreign markets and can help them to differentiate their offerings from those of other firms. However, the relation between services and manufacturing exports has only been partially analysed in the previous literature. This study contributes to the field by discussing the role of services for firms and empirically testing a set of related conjectures. Export intensity is regressed on two services input parameters, applying a fractional model to a rich panel of firms in Sweden in the period 2001–2007. The microeconometric results suggest that, after controlling for covariates and heterogeneity, service inputs affect a firms’ export capabilities: raising the proportion of services in in-house production yields higher export intensity on average. Furthermore, buying-in more services is associated with higher export intensity for firms in some industries. Overall, the study provides new firm-level evidence of the role of services as inputs in manufacturing.