Decomposing World Export Growth and the Relevance of New Destinations

Andres Zahler

No 20, CID Working Papers from Center for International Development at Harvard University

Abstract: Looking to understand what drives countries' export growth in practice, I provide a decomposition of world export growth at the product variety level between new destinations, new products, and growth in value of old varieties. New destinations play a significant role, accounting for 37 percent of the growth in developing countries. By comparison, entry into new product categories - a margin that has received considerable attention - explains just 7 percent of export growth. Exploring the nature of destination expansion reveals it is neither automatic nor permanent. Even relatievly competitive sectors face difficulties penetrating new destinations, and these difficulties are negatively correlated with population size and GDP per capita. Consistent with pervasive experimentation and failure, more than a third of all products in new destinations exported only once to a destination in the sixteen years studied.

Keywords: international trade; export growth; destinations; export growth decomposition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 F15 F19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/ce ... ing_papers/020-2.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Decomposing world export growth and the relevance of new destinations (2007)
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:cid:wpfacu:20

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CID Working Papers from Center for International Development at Harvard University 79 John F. Kennedy Street. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chuck McKenney ().