Empirical studies have shown that trade agreements have different effects on countries based on their level of development, especially in trade potentials. There have been several trade agreements between North-South and South-South countries, which are accompanied with different outcomes based...

Existing South African work on firm-level data has been limited by access to large datasets that track firms over time. This paper overcomes this by analysing a new dataset of the population of manufacturing firms that are matched to their export transactions. South African firm-level exporting...

In this paper we highlight a new complementary channel to the business and social network effect à la Rauch (2001) through which immigrants generate increased export flows from the regions in which they settle to their countries of origin: they can become entrepreneurs. Using very small-scale...

This paper contributes to the understanding of the linkages between exporting, labour demand, and wages in South Africa. We disentangle labour market differences between exporters and non-exporters and find that exporters employ more people and pay higher wages. Given these higher wages we...

Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises - the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global trade. Its success contradicts its...

This paper studies how a positive export shock - the sharp increase in garment-sector exports that began at the end of the Multifibre Arrangement (MFA) - spread through Bangladesh's labor markets. Although the end of the MFA was arguably exogenous to Bangladesh, we instrument export demand with...

We use newly available representative panel data for manufacturing enterprises in West and East Germany to investigate the link between production-related subsidies and exports. We document that only a small fraction of enterprises is subsidized, and that exports and subsidies are positively...

A country or firm's position in the value chain will largely depend on its comparative advantage, and therefore the mix of skills and resource endowments it brings to international production. For some, this might initially involve specialising in the labour intensive segments while others may...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in generating economic activity and employment in developing and developed countries. However, partly due to remaining at-the-border trade costs, SMEs continue to be less represented in international trade – as direct exporters...

Although global value chain (GVCs) participation in Southeast Asia has been growing, little is known about whether the benefits from participation are accruing to larger firms or if small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up the majority of companies and employ the bulk of the...