Now showing 1 - 9 of 9
  • Publication
    Products or markets: What type of experience matters for export survival?
    (Springer, 2023-07-20) ;
    Previous research has generally shown that increased export experience is positively correlated with the subsequent survival of newly launched export flows by a firm. In this paper, we find that there are important differences in the relationship between firm experience and export survival depending on the source of the experience. Specifically, experience built up by a firm from previously exporting a particular product before launching it in a new market is positively associated with the survival of a new product-market flow. In contrast, experience within a market prior to adding a new product has a mainly negative correlation with the survival probability of the new product-market export flow. This shows that taking a successful product to new markets is more likely to succeed than expanding product range within a market. We further find evidence suggestive of firms bringing their most established products to a wider range of markets while launching new product lines in their more established markets.
      31
  • Publication
    A note on trade costs and distance
    (Central Bank of Ireland, 2007-10) ;
    One of the most famous and robust findings in international economics is that distance has a strong negative effect on trade. Bernard, Jensen, Redding, and Schott (2007) discuss how this can be decomposed into an effect due to the number of products and an effect due to average exports per product. Using US firm-level data, they show that distance has a strong negative effect on the number of products exported. However, they find that the intensive margin—average sales of individual products—is increasing with distance. We show that this apparently puzzling finding is consistent with models featuring firm heterogeneity in productivity and fixed costs associated with exporting to each market. We also show how evidence of this type can be used to derive new estimates of how distance affects fixed and variable trade costs and how these two costs combine to generate the distance effect on trade.
      385
  • Publication
    Old Firms and New Export Flows: Does Experience Increase Survival?
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2019-09) ;
    In this paper we present new empirical evidence on the relationship between exporting experience and the duration of export relationships at the firm-product-destination level. Our starting hypothesis that more experienced exporters would have longer lived product-market trade relationships is quite strongly rejected in baseline specifications. However,we find that when we introduce interaction effects between experience and product scope and also between experience and similarity to the firm's core export product, our results change considerably. These findings suggest that at some level of experience as an exporter there is a decline in the marginal return on the positive effects on survival of product diversification and proximity. We suggest that this is evidence that more experienced firms launch product-destination pairs further away from their core competence and/or into more risky markets which therefore increases the risk of failure of any individual product-destination pairing.
      273
  • Publication
    Where do firms export, how much, and why?
    (Irish Economic Association, 2008-04) ;
    The empirical finding that exporting firms are more productive on average than non-exporters has provoked a large theoretical literature based on models such as Melitz (2003), where more productive firms are more likely to overcome costs associated with trade. This paper provides a systematic empirical assessment of the Melitz framework using a unique Irish dataset that includes information on destinations and firm characteristics such as productivity. We find a number of interesting deviations from the model’s predictions including a high degree of unpredictable idiosyncratic participation in export markets by firms, a relatively weak positive correlation between the extent of export participation and export sales, and a limited role for productivity in explaining firm exporting behavior. We illustrate the effect of firm heterogeneity on gravity regressions of aggregate trade flows and show how past exporting to a particular market has a strong impact on the current probability of exporting there.
      696
  • Publication
    Where do firms export, how much, and why?
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2008-09-22) ;
    The empirical finding that exporting firms are more productive on average than non-exporters has provoked a large theoretical literature based on models such as Melitz (2003), where more productive firms are more likely to overcome costs associated with trade. This paper provides a systematic empirical assessment of the Melitz framework using a unique Irish dataset that includes information on destinations and firm characteristics such as productivity. We find a number of interesting deviations from the model’s predictions including a high degree of unpredictable idiosyncratic participation in export markets by firms, a relatively weak positive correlation between the extent of export participation and export sales, and a limited role for productivity in explaining firm exporting behavior. We illustrate the effect of firm heterogeneity on gravity regressions of aggregate trade flows and show how past exporting to a particular market has a strong impact on the current probability of exporting there.
      352
  • Publication
    Old Firms and New Products: Does Experience Increase Survival?
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2018-02) ;
    We examine the relationship between exporting experience and the duration of firm export product flows. We find that more experienced firms (in years of exporting) show a higher probability of failure associated with the introduction of new products. On the other hand, firms with broader export scope are more likely to have better survival times for newly launched products. Although apparently counter-intuitive, we show that this finding is consistent with models of multi-product firms in which firms begin exporting by launching the products closest to their core competency and gradually expand their range of products by exporting those that are further away from their core, resulting in lower survival probability for later products. Validating this interpretation, we show that the distance of the new products to the core competency of the firm plays an important role in determining the survival of new products.
      176
  • Publication
    Products or Markets: What Type of Experience Matters for Export Survival?
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2019-10-01) ;
    Previous research has generally shown that increased export experience has a positive impact on the subsequent survival of newly launched export relationships of a firm. In this paper, we find that there are important differences in the effects of firm experience on export survival depending on the source of the experience. Specifically, experience built up by a firm from previously exporting a particular product before launching it in a new market has a strong positive impact on the survival of a new product-market relationship. In contrast, experience within a market prior to adding a new product has a mainly negative effect on the survival probability of the additional product. This shows that taking a successful product to new markets is more likely to succeed than expanding product range within a market.
      286
  • Publication
    A note on trade costs and distance
    (University College Dublin. School of Economics, 2007-11) ;
    One of the most famous and robust findings in international economics is that distance has a strong negative effect on trade. Bernard, Jensen, Redding, and Schott (2007) discuss how this can be decomposed into an effect due to the number of products and an effect due to average exports per product. Using US firm-level data, they show that distance has a strong negative effect on the number of products exported. However, they find that the intensive margin—average sales of individual products—is increasing with distance. We show that this apparently puzzling finding is consistent with models featuring firm heterogeneity in productivity and fixed costs associated with exporting to each market. We also show how evidence of this type can be used to derive new estimates of how distance affects fixed and variable trade costs and how these two costs combine to generate the distance effect on trade.
      518
  • Publication
    Understanding the dynamics of labor shares and inflation
    (Central Bank of Ireland, 2007-05) ;
    Calvo-style models of nominal rigidities currently provide the dominant paradigm for understanding the linkages between wage and price dynamics. Recent empirical implementations stress the idea that these models link inflation to the behavior of the labour share of income. Galí, Gertler, and Lopez-Salido (2001) argue that the model explains the combination of declining inflation and labour shares in Euro area. In this paper, we show that with realistic parameters, the canonical Calvo-style model cannot explain this outcome. In addition, we show that the model fails very badly in sectoral data. We examine the elements underlying the decline in the labour share in Europe, and conclude that the key factors are related to technological and labour market developments not accounted for in the standard New-Keynesian framework.
      427