Costs of trade and self-selection into exporting and importing: The case of Turkish manufacturing firms

Başak Dalgıç (), Burcu Fazlıoğlu () and Michael Gasiorek

Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), 2015, vol. 9, No 2015-15, 28 pages

Abstract: This paper focuses on self-selection into trade by exporting and importing firms, and on the presence of differential variable and sunk costs between exporters and importers across different categories of imports. The authors use a rich and recent dataset for Turkish manufacturing firms for the period 2003 - 2010. This allows them to provide a comprehensive analysis of firm heterogeneity and the connection between firm-level performance and international trade. They provide evidence on the remarkable heterogeneity across firms where only-importers (importers) perform better than only-exporters (exporters). The authors detect a self-selection effect for both importing and exporting firms with a stronger effect for importers. The results suggest that the nature of sunk costs varies between importing and exporting activities with importers facing higher sunk costs. Tariffs represent a potentially important source of variation in the variable costs of trading. When taking the tariffs faced by firms into account, the authors find that the self-selection effect associated with sunk costs is still present but greatly reduced with a smaller reduction for importers compared to exporters.

Keywords: firm heterogeneity; self-selection; sunk costs; exports; imports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D22 F14 L10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://dx.doi.org/10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2015-15
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Working Paper: Costs of trade and self-selection into exporting and importing: The case of Turkish manufacturing firms (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifweej:201515

DOI: 10.5018/economics-ejournal.ja.2015-15

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