Importing and Firm Export Performance: New Evidence from South Africa

Lawrence Edwards, Marco Sanfilippo and Asha Sundaram

South African Journal of Economics, 2018, vol. 86, issue S1, 79-95

Abstract: This article uses firm‐level data from company income tax and customs declarations from South Africa to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and firm exports in the manufacturing industry. There are two main findings. The first is on firm heterogeneity, showing that firms that import and export consistently demonstrate premiums in terms of productivity, employment, wages and capital intensity in production compared to firms that do not trade, or only export or import. The second supports the hypothesis that importing raises exports, especially if inputs are sourced from advanced economies.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/saje.12154

Related works:
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:bla:sajeco:v:86:y:2018:i:s1:p:79-95

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-2280

Access Statistics for this article

South African Journal of Economics is currently edited by Philip A. Black

More articles in South African Journal of Economics from Economic Society of South Africa Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().