Fixed Export Costs and Export Behavior

Luis Castro Peñarrieta, Ben Li, Keith Maskus and Yiqing Xie

Southern Economic Journal, 2016, vol. 83, issue 1, 300-320

Abstract: This article provides a direct assessment of how fixed export costs (FECs) and productivity jointly determine firm‐level export behavior. Using Chilean data, we construct indices of FECs for each industry‐region‐year triplet and match them to domestic firms. Our empirical results show that firms facing higher estimated FECs are less likely to export, while those with higher productivity export more. These outcomes are the foundation of the widely‐used sorting mechanism in trade models with firm heterogeneity. We also find that the substitution between FECs and productivity in determining export decisions is weaker for firms with higher productivity. Finally, among firms that export, both larger FECs and greater within‐triplet productivity dispersion are associated with a greater export volume of the average exporter.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12127

Related works:
Working Paper: Fixed Export Costs and Export Behavior (2014)
Working Paper: Fixed Export Costs and Export Behavior (2014)
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:wly:soecon:v:83:y:2016:i:1:p:300-320

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Southern Economic Journal from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().