From Estimation Results to Stylized Facts: Twelve Recommendations for Empirical Research in International Activities of Heterogeneous Firms

Research output: Contributions to collected editions/worksChapterpeer-review

Authors

Heterogeneous firms are at the heart of both the New New International Trade Theory and the Micro-econometrics of International Firm Activities. One important aim of microeconometric studies is to uncover stylized facts that hold over space and time, and that can both inspire theoretical models that are based on “realistic” assumptions, and inform policy debates in an evidence-based way. Which results from the thousands of empirical estimates reported in the literature on the microeconometrics of international firm activities do we consider as convincing? Based on my own experience from the last 20 years, I use the opportunity of this chapter to make 12 recommendations that, hopefully, will help to find the right way on the thorny road from estimation results to stylized facts. I will deal with the following topics: comparisons of means vs. comparisons of distributions; extremely different firms, or outliers; unobserved heterogeneity; simultaneous occurrence of differences across quantiles, outliers, and unobserved heterogeneity; heterogeneous effects of international firm activities on firm performance; replication; within-study replication by international research teams; meta-analysis; and talking to practitioners.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMicroeconometrics of International Trade
EditorsJoachim Wagner
Number of pages36
PublisherWorld Scientific Publishing Co.
Publication date01.07.2016
Pages479-514
ISBN (print)9789813109681
ISBN (electronic)9789813109698
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.07.2016

Bibliographical note

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

    Research areas

  • heterogeneous firms, International firm activities, meta analysis, replication, robust statistics, stylized facts
  • Economics