This paper examines the pre-exit productivity performance and asks how productivity affects future survival, using firm-level data in Japan for 1995-2002. We found that firms did not face "sudden death" but there was a "shadow of death." Future exiting firms had lower performance four years...

International trade has been a key engine driving Chinese economic growth in recent decades. Yet, long-term analyses of China's trade are still difficult because the country's trade statistics for the post-war period up to the mid-1980s have many shortcomings For example, official customs...