TY - CHAP

T1 - Exports and Firm Characteristics in German Manufacturing Industries

T2 - New Evidence from Representative Panel Data

AU - Wagner, Joachim

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2016 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

PY - 2016/6/21

Y1 - 2016/6/21

N2 - Germany is one of the leading actors in the world market for manufactured goods but not every firm from a manufacturing industry in Germany is an exporter. In 2006, the share of exporters in all enterprises was 69 percent in West Germany and 52 percent in East Germany. Reliable information on the characteristics of exporting and non-exporting firms is important to guide theorists and policy makers in an evidence-based way. This chapter uses recently released rich high quality data for a large representative panel of enterprises from German manufacturing industries to investigate the links between firm-characteristics and export activities, demonstrating the decisive role of human capital intensity for exporting. It links these findings to the recent literature from the new new trade theory on international activities of heterogeneous firms that emphasizes the role of productivity for exporting. It shows that productivity is important for exporting as is hypothesized in the formal theoretical models, but that contrary to the assumption made in these models productivity is not (only) the result from a random draw from the productivity distribution - it is strongly positively related to human capital intensity.

AB - Germany is one of the leading actors in the world market for manufactured goods but not every firm from a manufacturing industry in Germany is an exporter. In 2006, the share of exporters in all enterprises was 69 percent in West Germany and 52 percent in East Germany. Reliable information on the characteristics of exporting and non-exporting firms is important to guide theorists and policy makers in an evidence-based way. This chapter uses recently released rich high quality data for a large representative panel of enterprises from German manufacturing industries to investigate the links between firm-characteristics and export activities, demonstrating the decisive role of human capital intensity for exporting. It links these findings to the recent literature from the new new trade theory on international activities of heterogeneous firms that emphasizes the role of productivity for exporting. It shows that productivity is important for exporting as is hypothesized in the formal theoretical models, but that contrary to the assumption made in these models productivity is not (only) the result from a random draw from the productivity distribution - it is strongly positively related to human capital intensity.

KW - Exports

KW - firm characteristics

KW - Germany

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85135663397&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/70784215-52ed-3f8a-abf7-b01667d10505/

U2 - 10.1142/9789813109698_0003

DO - 10.1142/9789813109698_0003

M3 - Chapter

AN - SCOPUS:85135663397

SN - 9789813109681

T3 - World Scientific Studies in international Economics

SP - 91

EP - 137

BT - Microeconometrics of International Trade

A2 - Wagner, Joachim

PB - World Scientific Publishing Co.

ER -