IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/cesisp/0341.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Low-productive exporters are high-quality exporters. Evidence from Germany

Author

Listed:
  • Wagner, Joachim

    (Leuphana University Lueneburg and CESIS, Stockholm)

Abstract

A stylized fact from the emerging literature on the micro-econometrics of international trade and a central implication of the heterogeneous firm models from the new new trade theory is that exporters are more productive than non-exporters. However, many firms from the lower end of the productivity distribution are exporters. Germany is a case in point. A recent study reports that these low-productivity exporters are not marginal exporters defined according to the share of exports in total sales, or export participation over time, or the number of goods exported, or the number of countries exported to. This paper documents that low-productive exporters are competitive because they export high-quality goods. The quality of exports is much higher among exporters from the lower end of the productivity distribution than among highly productive exporters.

Suggested Citation

  • Wagner, Joachim, 2014. "Low-productive exporters are high-quality exporters. Evidence from Germany," Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation 341, Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0341
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://static.sys.kth.se/itm/wp/cesis/cesiswp341.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joachim Wagner & Yama Temouri, 2021. "Do Outliers and Unobserved Heterogeneity Explain the Exporter Productivity Premium? Evidence from France, Germany and the United Kingdom," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joachim Wagner (ed.), MICROECONOMETRIC STUDIES OF FIRMS’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS Advanced Methods of Analysis and Evidence from German Enterprises, chapter 13, pages 223-236, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Melitz, Marc J. & Redding, Stephen J., 2014. "Heterogeneous Firms and Trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 1-54, Elsevier.
    3. Chad Syverson, 2011. "What Determines Productivity?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(2), pages 326-365, June.
    4. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "Exports and Productivity: A Survey of the Evidence from Firm Level Data," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 1, pages 3-41, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Joachim Wagner, 2012. "German multiple-product, multiple-destination exporters: Bernard-Redding-Schott under test," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(2), pages 1708-1714.
    6. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "Trading Many Goods with Many Countries: Exporters and Importers from German Manufacturing Industries," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 14, pages 455-476, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    7. Horst Raff & Joachim Wagner, 2014. "Foreign Ownership and the Extensive Margins of Exports: Evidence for Manufacturing Enterprises in Germany," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 579-591, May.
    8. Stefan Baumgärtner & Alexandra Klein & Denise Thiel & Klara Winkler, 2015. "Ramsey Discounting of Ecosystem Services," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 61(2), pages 273-296, June.
    9. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2012. "The Empirics of Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 283-313, July.
    10. Lucia Foster & John Haltiwanger & Chad Syverson, 2008. "Reallocation, Firm Turnover, and Efficiency: Selection on Productivity or Profitability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 394-425, March.
    11. Mark Doms & Eric J. Bartelsman, 2000. "Understanding Productivity: Lessons from Longitudinal Microdata," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 569-594, September.
    12. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "International Trade and Firm Performance: A Survey of Empirical Studies since 2006," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 2, pages 43-87, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Joachim Wagner, 2013. "Are low-productive exporters marginal exporters? Evidence from Germany," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(1), pages 467-481.
    14. Juan Carlos Hallak & Jagadeesh Sivadasan, 2009. "Firms' Exporting Behavior under Quality Constraints," Working Papers 09-13, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    15. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    16. Joachim Wagner, 2008. "A note on why more West than East German firms export," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 363-370, December.
    17. David Greenaway & Richard Kneller, 2007. "Firm heterogeneity, exporting and foreign direct investment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(517), pages 134-161, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Arijit Mukherjee & Umut Erksan Senalp, 2021. "Firm‐productivity and cross border merger," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(4), pages 838-859, September.
    2. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "A survey of empirical studies using transaction level data on exports and imports," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(1), pages 215-225, February.
    3. José Manuel Mansilla-Fernández & Juliette Milgram-Baleix, 2023. "Working capital management, financial constraints and exports: evidence from European and US manufacturers," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 1769-1810, April.
    4. Arijit Mukherjee, 2017. "Firm-productivity and export under non-constant marginal costs," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(2), pages 911-917.
    5. Joachim Wagner, 2014. "New Data from Official Statistics for Imports and Exports of Goods by German Enterprises," Schmollers Jahrbuch : Journal of Applied Social Science Studies / Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 134(3), pages 371-378.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joachim Wagner & Yama Temouri, 2021. "Do Outliers and Unobserved Heterogeneity Explain the Exporter Productivity Premium? Evidence from France, Germany and the United Kingdom," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joachim Wagner (ed.), MICROECONOMETRIC STUDIES OF FIRMS’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS Advanced Methods of Analysis and Evidence from German Enterprises, chapter 13, pages 223-236, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Joachim Wagner, 2013. "Are low-productive exporters marginal exporters? Evidence from Germany," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(1), pages 467-481.
    3. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "A survey of empirical studies using transaction level data on exports and imports," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(1), pages 215-225, February.
    4. David Powell & Joachim Wagner, 2021. "The Exporter Productivity Premium Along the Productivity Distribution: Evidence from Quantile Regression with Nonadditive Firm Fixed Effects," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joachim Wagner (ed.), MICROECONOMETRIC STUDIES OF FIRMS’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS Advanced Methods of Analysis and Evidence from German Enterprises, chapter 9, pages 121-149, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Joachim Wagner, 2012. "Productivity and the extensive margins of trade in German manufacturing firms: Evidence from a non-parametric test," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 3061-3070.
    6. Richter, Philipp M. & Schiersch, Alexander, 2017. "CO2 emission intensity and exporting: Evidence from firm-level data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 373-391.
    7. Joachim Wagner, 2016. "Trading Many Goods with Many Countries: Exporters and Importers from German Manufacturing Industries," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Microeconometrics of International Trade, chapter 14, pages 455-476, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. Joachim Wagner, 2012. "Exports, R&D and productivity: a test of the Bustos-model with German enterprise data," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 1942-1948.
    9. Vincenzo Verardi & Joachim Wagner, 2021. "Productivity Premia for German Manufacturing Firms Exporting to the Euro-area and Beyond: First Evidence from Robust Fixed Effects Estimations," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Joachim Wagner (ed.), MICROECONOMETRIC STUDIES OF FIRMS’ IMPORTS AND EXPORTS Advanced Methods of Analysis and Evidence from German Enterprises, chapter 7, pages 87-109, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Giovannetti, Giorgia & Marvasi, Enrico, 2016. "Food exporters in global value chains: Evidence from Italy," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 110-125.
    11. Ingo Geishecker & Philipp J. H. Schröder & Allan Sørensen, 2017. "Explaining the size differences of exporter premia: theory and evidence," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 153(2), pages 327-351, May.
    12. Alvaro Garcia-Marin & Nico Voigtländer, 2019. "Exporting and Plant-Level Efficiency Gains: It's in the Measure," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1777-1825.
    13. Joachim Wagner, 2014. "Extensive margins of imports, productivity and profitability: First evidence for manufacturing enterprises in Germany," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 34(3), pages 1669-1678.
    14. Raffaele Brancati & Emanuela Marrocu & Manuel Romagnoli & Stefano Usai, 2018. "Innovation activities and learning processes in the crisis: evidence from Italian export in manufacturing and services," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 27(1), pages 107-130.
    15. Joachim Wagner, 2014. "Extensive Margins of Imports and Profitability: First Evidence for Manufacturing Enterprises in Germany," Working Paper Series in Economics 298, University of Lüneburg, Institute of Economics.
    16. David Powell & Joachim Wagner, 2011. "The Exporter Productivity Premium along the Productivity Distribution Evidence from Unconditional Quantile Regression with Firm Fixed Effects," Working Papers WR-837, RAND Corporation.
    17. Powell, David & Wagner, Joachim, 2010. "The Exporter Productivity Premium along the Productivity Distribution: First Evidence from a Quantile Regression Approach for Fixed Effects Panel Data Models," IZA Discussion Papers 5112, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Federici, Daniela & Parisi, Valentino & Ferrante, Francesco, 2020. "Heterogeneous firms, corporate taxes and export behavior: A firm-level investigation for Italy," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 98-112.
    19. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2015. "Service Trade and Productivity: Firm-level evidence from Japan," Discussion papers 15030, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    20. Langenmayr, Dominika & Haufler, Andreas & Bauer, Christian J., 2015. "Should tax policy favor high- or low-productivity firms?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 18-34.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Exports; productivity; low-productive exporters; export quality;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade

    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:hhs:cesisp:0341. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Vardan Hovsepyan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cekthse.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.