Exports and Firm Characteristics in German Manufacturing Industries: New Evidence from Representative Panel Data

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Germany is one of the leading actors on 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 paper 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, which emphasizes the role of productivity in 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.
Original languageEnglish
JournalApplied Economics Quarterly
Volume57
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)107-143
ISSN1611-6607
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011

    Research areas

  • Economics - Exports, firm characteristics, Germany

DOI

Recently viewed

Researchers

  1. Tina Lazardzig

Publications

  1. Entwicklung und Qualitätssicherung von Anwendungssoftware
  2. "Alles, was sich kreuzt"?
  3. Evaluating the German version of the Work Ability Survey-R (WAS-R)
  4. Trade-offs between justices, economics, and efficiency
  5. Local and landscape level variables influence butterfly diversity in critically endangered South African renosterveld
  6. Wer kommt - wer geht – und warum?
  7. Modelling of heat exchangers based on thermochemical material for solar heat storage systems
  8. Digital Tudor
  9. § 24 Deponiegas
  10. “Come on, we’ll look at it now”: professionals’ work on fetal viewability following spontaneous and induced loss.
  11. § 30 Windenergie Repowering
  12. Assessing students’ enjoyment in physical education
  13. Unter Horizont
  14. Validität des NEPS-Mathematiktests für die neunte Klasse
  15. Der Titelrekognitionstest für das Vorschulalter (TRT-VS)
  16. Introduction: Two Centuries of the Sublime in American Landscape, Art, and Literature
  17. Promote, ignore, pretend
  18. Responsible Leadership Systems
  19. Kampf um Ein- und Ausschluss.
  20. What can balance the effort? Associations between effort-reward imbalance, overcommitment, and affective disorders in German teachers
  21. Sozialwissenschaftliche Aspekte des Gründungsmanagements
  22. Was ist Datenkritik?
  23. Schlüsselqualifikationen
  24. Rechtliche Aspekte
  25. Linking genetics and ecology
  26. Integrating rural development and biodiversity conservation in Central Romania
  27. Vorläufige und notwendige Formalisierungslücken in der IT-Beratung
  28. Vorbereitung zur Wiederverwendung:
  29. "Welch’ eine arme Sau"
  30. One for all, all for one