We estimate the relationship between exporting and productivity using data on Israeli manufacturing firms from the years 1996-2003. We find that the total factor productivity of exporting firms in Israel is higher than that of non-exporters. The export premium is higher before firms enter the...

We analyze the foundations of the relationship between trade and total factor productivity (TFP) in the Ricardian model. Under general assumptions about the autarky distributions of industry productivities, trade openness raises TFP. This is due to the selection effect of international...

Multi-sector versions of the international trade model of Eaton and Kortum (2002) usually restrict trade elasticities to be identical across sectors, with potentially distorting effects on the estimates of the model parameters. This paper allows for heterogeneous sectoral trade elasticities and...

We investigate whether exposure to export markets improves plant productivity. Our estimation framework adds export experience as an additional state variable and a fixed cost of entry into export markets to Olley and Pakes's (1996) behavioral model. We find robust evidence of a positive effect...

The paper studies Bulgaria's cost and trade competitiveness in the triple challenge of transition, accession to the EU and currency board arrangement. It studies unit labor cost (ULC) dynamics in the industrial sectors and their impact on export shares. Bulgaria's textile and apparel industries...

There has been little analysis of the effect of inward FDI on international R&D diffusion, especially in LDCs, although FDI has become the core of international production and LDCs have been receiving an increasing share of world FDI over the past few decades. Using data from 57 countries from...

This paper empirically investigates the impact of tariffs when production is organized in global value chains. Using global input-output matrices, we construct four different tariff measures that capture the direct and indirect exposure to tariffs at different stages of the production chain for...

We study the impact of techies—engineers and other technically trained workers—on firm-level productivity. We first report new facts on the role of techies in the firm by leveraging French administrative data and unique surveys. Techies are STEM-skill intensive and are associated with...

We study the impact of techies-engineers and other technically trained workers-on firm-level productivity. We first report new facts on the role of techies in the firm by leveraging French administrative data and unique surveys. Techies are STEM-skill intensive and are associated with...

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers’ convergence could therefore...