Second thoughts on the exporter productivity premium

Philipp Schröder and Allan Sørensen

Canadian Journal of Economics, 2012, vol. 45, issue 4, 1310-1331

Abstract: Contrary to the prevailing interpretation, this paper shows that the central models of trade with heterogeneous firms ( Melitz 2003 ; Bernard et al. 2003 ) exhibit ambiguous predictions for the exporter productivity premium. This prospect arises because of differences between theoretical and empirical representations of firm productivity. Instead of marginal productivity, we examine in both models the theoretical equivalent of empirically observable productivity (value-added per employee). Given the presence of fixed export costs or heterogeneous mark-ups and trade costs, the observable productivity of exporters in proximity to the export-indifferent firm turns out to be lower than that of non-exporters; that is, the productivity distributions overlap. The paper reviews empirical literature that reports non-positive exporter productivity premia in firm-level data and discusses implications for empirical research on exporter performance, including learning and the role of non-parametric regressions (stochastic dominance, quantile regressions), fixed costs, and productivity distributions.

JEL-codes: D24 F12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5982.2012.01742.x (text/html)
access restricted to subscribers

Related works:
Journal Article: Second thoughts on the exporter productivity premium (2012)
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:cje:issued:v:45:y:2012:i:4:p:1310-1331

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.economic ... ionen/membership.php

Access Statistics for this article

Canadian Journal of Economics is currently edited by Zhiqi Chen

More articles in Canadian Journal of Economics from Canadian Economics Association Canadian Economics Association Prof. Werrner Antweiler, Treasurer UBC Sauder School of Business 2053 Main Mall Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z2. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Prof. Werner Antweiler ().