In this paper we investigate the determinants of the dramatic increase in services tradability focusing on the extensive margin of the phenomenon. We use balance sheet and firm-level service trade information over the period 1995-2005 provided by the National Bank of Belgium and we merge it with...

We provide an analysis of the 2008-2009 trade collapse using microdata from a small open economy, Belgium. First, we find that changes in firm-country-product exports and imports occurred mostly at the intensive margin: the number of firms, the average number of destination and origin markets...

In this paper, we present for the first time a qualitative and quantitative comparison between trade in services and trade in goods at firm level for the same country. We focus first on static features of trade such as participation rates, firms’ characteristics, heterogeneity, concentration...

This paper uses Belgian firm-level data, covering the 1998-2006 period, to assess the impact on TFP growth of key labour force structural changes: ageing, feminisation and rise of educational attainment. Based on a Hellerstein-Neumark analytical framework, our work shows that an ageing workforce...

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak enforcement of international contracts. We find that, all else equal,...

We develop a new general equilibrium model of trade with heterogeneous firms, variable demand elasticities and endogenously determined wages. Trade integration favours wage convergence, boosts competition, and forces the least efficient firms to leave the market, thereby affecting aggregate...

We use Belgian firm-level data over the period 1996-2007 to analyze the impact of imports from China and other low-wage countries on firm growth, exit, and skill upgrading in manufacturing. For this purpose we use both industry-level and firm-level imports by country of origin and distinguish...