Economic performance and international trade engagement: the case of Portuguese manufacturing firms

Armando Silva (), Oscar Afonso and Ana Paula Africano
Additional contact information
Ana Paula Africano: Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto and CEFUP

No 37, GEE Papers from Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia

Abstract: By combining economic and financial data for Portuguese manufacturing firms with data on their exports and imports, we uncover some aspects of the relationship between international trade engagement and firms’ performance. In line with recent theoretical and empirical developments in the international trade literature: (i) we testify that Portuguese international trade is highly concentrated, especially on the import side, and both in inter- and intra-sector terms; (ii) we corroborate previous studies and theses according to which two-way traders outperform only importers, only exporters and above all domestic firms; (iii) we find that the greater the diversification of markets and goods (especially with regard to imports), the better the performance achieved by internationalised firms; (iv) we notice that the higher the intensity of international trade of firms (especially imports), the better the performance of firms; (v) we also present evidence that destination markets, for exports, and, origin markets, for imports, are also important in explaining firm performance.

Keywords: International trade; Firm performance; Diversification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 F14 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2011-05, Revised 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-cse and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gee.gov.pt/RePEc/WorkingPapers/GEE_PAPERS_37.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Economic performance and international trade engagement: the case of Portuguese manufacturing firms (2013)
Working Paper: Economic performance and international trade engagement: the case of Portuguese manufacturing firms (2010)
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:mde:wpaper:0037

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GEE Papers from Gabinete de Estratégia e Estudos, Ministério da Economia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joana Almodovar ().