Low export participation of firms across countries is typically related to high entry costs allowing only the most productive firms to serve foreign markets. In this paper, we move beyond individual firm characteristics to explain export participation and investigate whether firms' domestic...

This paper studies how outsourcing of services activities affects TFP at the firm level. Using the universe of buyer-supplier relationships in Belgium, we first document several new empirical facts about how firms engage in the outsourcing of supporting activities. We show that virtually all...

Using detailed firm-product level quarterly data, we develop an estimation framework of a Multi-Product Production Function (MPPF) and analyse firm-product level TFP estimations at various levels (industries, products). After documenting our estimation results, we relate productivity estimates...

We use Belgian data on domestic firm-to-firm transactions and ask how the measurement of the share of imports in final consumption is affected when one uses data recorded at higher levels of aggregation. We find that aggregating detailed firm-to-firm transaction data to the firm level and...

This paper studies the implications of imperfect competition in firm-to-firm trade. Using a dataset on all transactions between Belgian firms, we find that firms charge higher markups if they have higher input shares among their buyers. We interpret this as firms competing as oligopolies to...

This paper provides an estimation of the reaction of firm-level exports consecutive to real exchange rate movements - the exchange rate elasticity of exports. Following recent theoretical works emphasizing the role played by firm heterogeneity, we test in particular how the exchange rate...