Are Services Different Exporters?

Hans Lööf ()

Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik), 2010, vol. 56, issue 1, 99-117

Abstract: Using an unbalanced panel of about 260,000 Swedish firm-level observations over the period 1997 – 2006, this paper shows that half of the firms exporting goods are service firms that account for a substantial and increasing share of the total value from exports of goods. Between 1997 and 2006 this fraction increased from 25% to 34%. Previous research provides little systematic evidence of this extension of goods exports among service firms or the benefits of exporting. This paper shows that service firms do become exporters for the same reasons as manufacturing firms. Besides, they are a self-selection of larger, more productive and high-equity firms, with more skilled labour, higher capital intensity and stronger links to multinational groups. However, the export productivity premium is larger for service firms than for manufacturers. No evidence is found to indicate that exporting increases the growth rate of productivity. In contrast, the annual employment growth premium from exporting is substantial for business services, 2% per year, compared to 0.5% for the retail and wholesale business. Employment growth among manufacturing firms also benefits from expanded market opportunities in foreign markets.

Keywords: export productivity premium; manufacturing; services; micro data; panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C16 F14 L25 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Working Paper: Are Services Different Exporters? (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aeq:aeqaeq:v56_y2010_i1_q1_p99-117

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.duncker-h ... nomicsquarterly.html

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik) is currently edited by Ansgar Belke, Uwe Sunde and Winfried Koeniger

More articles in Applied Economics Quarterly (formerly: Konjunkturpolitik) from Duncker & Humblot, Berlin
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Deborah Anne Bowen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).