An Indirect Exporter is defined as a firm that sells its product to a trade intermediary in its own country, who then goes on to export the good. Despite the numerous appearances of these firms in recent theoretical models, there has been no empirical work comparing these firms to Domestic firms...

Using quantile regression and a rich cross section data set for German manufacturing plants this paper documents that the impact of plant characteristics on export activities varies along the conditional size distribution of the export/sales ratio.

This paper starts from the stylized fact that firm size and exporting tends to be positively related. Using large sets of establishment panel data for three different industries from official statistics evidence is presented that the familiar picture of an export/sales ratio that ceteris paribus...

This paper uses a large plant level panel data set from Germany and a matching approach to look for causal effects of starting to export on plant performance. We find positive effects on growth of employment, labor productivity, and wages.

In spite of widespread tariff reductions, intra-African borders remain thick. Regional trade is inhibited by inadequate transportation infrastructure, but also by various government-imposed measures. This paper combines price data from the World Bank’s International Comparison Project (ICP)...

This paper assesses the impact of migration on export performances. In particular, it highlights and helps understand how African migrants foster African trade. Relying on a new dataset on international bilateral migration recently released by the World Bank spanning from 1980 to 2010, we...

This paper presents the first empirical test with German establishment level data of a hypothesis derived by Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple in a model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either trough exports or foreign direct investment: only the more...

Using a knowledge production framework and a rich set of plant level data this study demonstrates that in Germany firms that are active on international markets as exporters or foreign direct investors do generate more new knowledge than firms which sell on the national market only. These...

The EAC is on the verge of establishing a customs union. But this is accompanied by fears that the Customs Union would lead to trade imbalances among the Partner States, which would create serious problems for the proper functioning of the Customs Union itself. To mitigate these problems the...

The main focus of this paper is the question if the success of regional integration organisation in developing countries is, in fact, dependent on factors like similarity of their economic structure, market size or lack of committment. It is shown that there are also other more important...