The Role of Services for Manufacturing Firms’ Exports

Magnus Lodefalk

No 2012:10, Working Papers from Örebro University, School of Business

Abstract: Manufacturing firms increasingly focus on services. This trend is evident in their composition of input, in-house production and seemingly also in total sale. Firms’ services intensity may affect their productivity, and thereby competitiveness abroad. Services are also instrumental in connecting to the foreign market and can help firms to differentiate their offers. However, only bits and pieces of the relation between services and manufacturing’s exports have been analysed in previous literature. This study contributes by discussing the role of services for the firm, arriving at some conjectures and testing them empirically. Export intensity is regressed on two services parameters, applying a fractional model to a rich panel of firms in Sweden in the period 2001-2007. The microeconometric results suggest that there is an effect of services inputs, while controlling for covariates and firm heterogeneity. Raising the proportion of services in in-house production, on average, yields higher export intensity. Buying-in more services is associated with higher export intensity for firms in selected industries. Overall, the study provides new firm-level evidence of the role of services as inputs in manufacturing.

Keywords: firm; export intensity; manufacturing; services; intangibles; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 L24 L25 L60 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2012-05-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse, nep-hme and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published as Lodefalk, Magnus, 'The Role of Services for Manufacturing Firms’ Exports' in Review of World Economics, 2014, pages 59-82.

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Journal Article: The role of services for manufacturing firm exports (2014)
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