Using a panel data set of bilateral export flows from 12 EU countries to 20 OECD trading partners over the period 1992-2003, a panel cointegration approach to estimating the gravity model is adopted to test for the significance of European regional integration. A comparison of the results indicates that a positive and significant coefficient estimate of the EU dummy variable is found for both t...

We develop a model to analyze one mechanism under which stronger intellectual property rights (IPR) protection may improve the ability of firms in developing countries to break into export markets. A Northern firm with a superior process technology chooses either exports or technology transfer through licensing as its mode of supplying the Southern market, based on local IPR policy. Given this ...

WTO Accession and Performance of Chinese Manufacturing Firms* China’s policy-makers argued that WTO accession and the accompanying trade liberalization would have a beneficial impact on the domestic economy. China’s import tariffs differed tremendously across industry in the earlier years, but converged to an almost uniform low level after WTO entry. We exploit sectoral variation in the extent ...

This paper develops a simple network model to describe the dynamic of the intensive and extensive margin of international trade flows. The result is achieved by means of the combination of two mechanisms of proportional growth: the first (discrete) determines the formation of trade links, the second (continuous) governs trade intensity. We show that our setup is able to simultaneously match a l...

Exports, Imports and Profitability: First Evidence for Manufacturing Enterprises This paper documents for the first time the relationship between profitability and three types of international trade activities – exports, imports and two-way trade. It uses unique new representative data for manufacturing enterprises from Germany, one of the leading actors on the world market for goods, that merg...

Understanding and quantifying the determinants of the number of sectors or firms exporting in a given country is of relevance for the assessment of trade policies. Estimation of models for the number of sectors, however, poses a challenge because the dependent variable has both a lower and upper bound, implying that the partial effects of the explanatory variables on the conditional mean of the...

Over the last decade, European Union members have experienced a dramatic increase in imports. This increase was accompanied by a strong growth in the number of imported goods and trading partners, indicating positive welfare gains for consumers via an extended set of consumption possibilities, as pointed out in the "New Trade Theory". In this paper, we apply the methodology developed by Feenstr...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of domestic and foreign outsourcing on level of employment. We will distinguish between narrow outsourcing (intra-industrial purchases of inputs) and broad outsourcing (inputs from all sectors). Outsourcing is calculated using domestic and import – use matrices of input-output tables for 28 Spanish manufacturing industries for the period 1993 t...

International Trade and Firm Performance: A Survey of Empirical Studies since 2006 The literature on international trade and firm performance grows exponentially. This paper attempts to summarize what we learn from this literature to guide both future empirical and theoretical work in this area, and public debates and policy makers, in an evidence-based way. The focus is on the empirical part o...

This paper develops a theory which investigates how firms’ choice of corporate organization is affecting firm performance and the nature of competition in international markets. We develop a model in which firms’ organisational choices determine heterogeneity across firms in size and productivity in the same industry. We then incorporate these organisational choices in a Krugman cumMelitz and O...