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Assessing European firms’ exports and productivity distributions: The CompNet trade module. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 282

Berthou, Antoine and Dhyne, Emmanuel and Bugamelli, Matteo and Cazacu, Ana-Maria and Demian, Calin-Vlad and Harasztosi, Peter and Lalinsky, Tibor and Merikul, Jaanika and Oropallo, Filippo and Soares, Ana Christina (2015) Assessing European firms’ exports and productivity distributions: The CompNet trade module. National Bank of Belgium Working Paper No. 282. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    This paper provides a new cross-country evaluation of competitiveness, focusing on the linkages between productivity and export performance among European economies. We use the information compiled in the Trade module of CompNet to establish new stylized facts regarding the joint distributions of the firm-level exports performance and productivity in a panel of 15 countries, 23 manufacturing sectors during the 2000’s. We confirm that exporters are more productive than nonexporters. However, this productivity premium is rising with the export experience of firms, with permanent exporters being much more productive than starters. At the intensive margin, we show that both the level and the growth of firm-level exports rise with firm productivity, and that the bulk of aggregate exports in each country are made by a small number of highly productive firms. Finally, we show that during the crisis, the growth of exports by high productive firms sustained the current account adjustment of European “stressed” economies. This last result confirms that the shape of the productivity distribution within each country can have important consequences from the point of view of the dynamics of aggregate trade patterns.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Uncontrolled Keywords: Firm-level exports, productivity, firm heterogeneity
    Subjects for non-EU documents: Countries > Belgium
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > economic and financial affairs > business/private economic activity
    EU policies and themes > External relations > international trade
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > National Bank of Belgium (Brussels) > Working Papers
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 09 Sep 2019 11:20
    Number of Pages: 60
    Last Modified: 09 Sep 2019 11:20
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/97426

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