Recent studies indicate that firms often outsource standard and simple tasks, while keeping complex and important inputs inside their boundaries. This observation is difficult to reconcile with the property rights approach of the firm, which suggests that important components should be...

We develop a theory of a firm in an environment with incomplete contracts. The firm’s headquarter decides on the complexity, the organization, and the global scale of its production process. Specifically, it decides: i) on the mass of symmetric intermediate inputs that are part of the value...

We develop a model with two asymmetric countries. Firms choose the number and the location of plants that they operate. The production of each firm increases when trade costs fall. The fall also induces multinationals to repatriate their production into a single country, which is likely to be...

This paper investigates short and long-run effects of trade liberalization on employment and wages. Employment and wage equations are estimated using data (1971–96) for importable and exportable sectors in Tunisia. Causality tests show that causality is unidirectional. Wages strongly causes...

While it is a stylized fact that exporting firms pay higher wages than non-exporting firms, the direction of the link between exporting and wages is less clear. Using a rich set of German linked employer-employee panel data we follow over time plants that start to export. We show that the...

18 studies using data from 20 highly developed, developing, and less developed countries document that average wages in exporting firms are higher than in non-exporting firms from the same industry and region. The existence of these so-called exporter wage premia is one of the stylized facts...

This paper studies the link between a firm’s education level, export performance and wages of its workers. We argue that firms may escape intense competition in international markets by using high skilled workers to differentiate their products. This story is consistent with our empirical...

Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality data at the plant level, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between productivity and size of the export market for Germany, a leading actor on the world market for manufactured goods. It...

This paper uses comprehensive high-quality panel data from official statistics for exporting enterprises to investigate the micro-structure of the recent export collapse in manufacturing industries in Germany during the crisis of 2008/2009. Almost all of the decline in exports was due to...

This paper documents the relationship between firm survival and three types of international trade activities - exports, imports and two-way trade. It uses unique new representative data for manufacturing enterprises from Germany, one of the leading actors on the world market for goods, that...