Do outliers and unobserved heterogeneity explain the exporter productivity premium? Evidence from France, Germany and the United Kingdom

Yama Temouri () and Joachim Wagner ()
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Yama Temouri: Aston University

No 320, Working Paper Series in Economics and Institutions of Innovation from Royal Institute of Technology, CESIS - Centre of Excellence for Science and Innovation Studies

Abstract: A stylized fact from the literature on the Micro-econometrics of International Trade and a central implication of the heterogeneous firm models from the New New Trade Theory is that exporters are more productive than non-exporters. It is argued that this exporter productivity premium is due to extra costs of exporting that can be covered only by more productive firms. However, in recent papers that control for extreme observations and unobserved firm heterogeneity by applying a highly robust fixed-effects estimator, no such exporter productivity premium is found for firms from manufacturing and services industries in Germany. This paper uses enterprise level panel data for France, Germany and the United Kingdom from 2003 to 2008 to systematically investigate the role of outliers and unobserved firm heterogeneity for estimates of the exporter productivity premium. We report that outliers do have an influence on the estimated exporter productivity premium. We argue that the vanishing exporter premium in robust fixed effects estimations that is reported for all three countries is caused by characteristics of firms that start or stop to export over the period under investigation, and that are not representative for the bulk of firms that either export or not.

Keywords: Export; productivity premium; outlier; unobserved heterogeneity; robust estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 pages
Date: 2013-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-eur and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Chapter: Do Outliers and Unobserved Heterogeneity Explain the Exporter Productivity Premium? Evidence from France, Germany and the United Kingdom (2021)
Journal Article: Do outliers and unobserved heterogeneity explain the exporter productivity premium? Evidence from France, Germany and the United Kingdom (2013)
Working Paper: Do outliers and unobserved heterogeneity explain the exporter productivity premium? Evidence from France, Germany and the United Kingdom (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:cesisp:0320

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