TY - JOUR

T1 - Exports and Productivity Growth

T2 - First Evidence from a Continuous Treatment Approach

AU - Fryges, Helmut

AU - Wagner, Joachim

N1 - Funding Information: Remark: This paper is part of the project “Exports and Productivity in Lower Saxonian Manufacturing Firms” financially supported by the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony. Special thanks go to the Statistical Office of Lower Saxony, and especially to Uwe Rode, for providing us the access to the confidential micro level data and running our Stata do-files. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at workshops on The Microeconometrics of International Firm Activities at Lueneburg University in September 2006, on Exports and Productivity – An International Comparison at the University of Nottingham in March 2007, on Regional and Mirco-Level Effects of Globalisation at the Institute for Applied Economic Research in Tübingen in July 2007, at the 34th EARIE Annual Conference in Valencia in September 2007, and at Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel in June 2007; comments from participants and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged. Please address correspondence to Joachim Wagner, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, Institute of Economics, Campus 4.210, D-21332 Lüneburg, Germany; e-mail: wagner@leuphana.de

PY - 2008/12

Y1 - 2008/12

N2 - A recent survey of 54 micro-econometric studies reveals that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. However, previous empirical studies show that exporting does not necessarily improve productivity. One possible reason for this result is that most previous studies are restricted to analysing the relationship between a firm's export status and the growth of its labour productivity, using the firms' export status as a binary treatment variable and comparing the performance of exporting and non-exporting firms. In this paper, we apply the newly developed generalised propensity score (GPS) methodology that allows for continuous treatment, that is, different levels of the firms' export activities. Using the GPS method and a large panel data set for German manufacturing firms, we estimate the relationship between a firm's export-sales ratio and its labour productivity growth rate. We find that there is a causal effect of firms' export activities on labour productivity growth. However, exporting improves labour productivity growth only within a sub-interval of the range of firms' export-sales ratios. © 2008 Kiel Institute.

AB - A recent survey of 54 micro-econometric studies reveals that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. However, previous empirical studies show that exporting does not necessarily improve productivity. One possible reason for this result is that most previous studies are restricted to analysing the relationship between a firm's export status and the growth of its labour productivity, using the firms' export status as a binary treatment variable and comparing the performance of exporting and non-exporting firms. In this paper, we apply the newly developed generalised propensity score (GPS) methodology that allows for continuous treatment, that is, different levels of the firms' export activities. Using the GPS method and a large panel data set for German manufacturing firms, we estimate the relationship between a firm's export-sales ratio and its labour productivity growth rate. We find that there is a causal effect of firms' export activities on labour productivity growth. However, exporting improves labour productivity growth only within a sub-interval of the range of firms' export-sales ratios. © 2008 Kiel Institute.

KW - Economics

KW - Continuous treatment

KW - Dose-response function

KW - Export-sales ratio

KW - Labour productivity

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=58549100688&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/91cb680f-c7e7-3b42-877f-f3ecf38c05e3/

U2 - 10.1007/s10290-008-0166-8

DO - 10.1007/s10290-008-0166-8

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 144

SP - 695

EP - 722

JO - Review of World Economics

JF - Review of World Economics

SN - 1610-2878

IS - 4

ER -