Does a crisis increase the number of regular exporters?
ABSTRACTThe severe reduction in domestic demand between 2008 and 2013 in Spain led many firms to start exporting. We explore whether the increase in the new crisis-induced exporters led to a larger...
Cities export specialization
We analyse whether more populated cities have an export specialization different from the one of less populated cities. Using very detailed product-level export data for Brazilian urban areas over ...
The contribution of granular and fundamental comparative advantage to European Union countries' export specialisation
This paper analyses the contribution of fundamental comparative advantage (a country‐specific component) and granular comparative advantage (a firm‐specific component) to European Union countries' export specialisation. We find that, on average, granular comparative advantage may explain export specialisation in 29% of industries, which account for 47% of total exports. We also show that 60% of the variation in export specialisation across countries and industries may be explained by granular comparative advantage. These results highlight that some outstanding firms may play a very important role in explaining European Union countries' export specialisation.
Networks and the disappearance of the intranational home bias
Abstract Previous studies have shown that, not only countries, but also regions have a preference to trade within their administrative borders. Using unique trade flows data, we also find a large home bias in Spanish intranational trade. However, we show that this home bias tends to disappear once we take into account the higher density of social and business networks within regions than between regions. We also find that the home bias does not disappear if intranational trade flows are measured in quantity rather than value. This fact might explain why previous studies on other European countries still find an intranational home bias, even when network effects are taken into account.
Los márgenes del crecimiento de las exportaciones españolas antes y después de la Gran Recesión
espanolDespues de la Gran Recesion de 2008-2009, la evolucion de las exportaciones espanolas ha sido positiva. Algunos analistas atribuyen este comportamiento al incremento de la base exportadora. Para validar esta hipotesis, realizamos una descomposicion del crecimiento de las exportaciones espanolas por margenes en el periodo 1997-2015. Los datos muestran que la contribucion de la base exportadora ha disminuido paulatinamente durante todo el intervalo analizado, incluso en el periodo posterior a la Gran Recesion. Ademas, la evolucion de la base exportadora se caracteriza por una caida paulatina tanto de la tasa de supervivencia de las empresas entrantes como del valor por transaccion de l…
Export markets: substitutes, complements, or independent?
Using a large sample of export transactions in Spain over the period 2010–2017, we explore whether firms treat export markets as substitutes, complements, or independent. We find that an exogenous ...
Is the Border Effect an Artefact of Geographical Aggregation?
The existence of a large border effect is considered as one of the main puzzles of international macroeconomics. We show that the border effect is, to a large extent, an artefact of geographic concentration. In order to do so we combine international flows with intra-national flows data characterised by a high geographic grid. At this fine grid, intra-national flows are highly localised and dropping sharply with distance. The use of a small geographical unit of reference to measure intra-national bilateral trade flows allows to estimating correctly the negative impact of distance on shipments. When we use sector disaggregated export flows of 50 Spanish provinces in years 2000 and 2005 split…
The extensive and intensive margins of Spanish trade
Recent empirical research highlights that differences in trade flows across countries, products and years are governed by two margins: the intensive margin and the extensive margin. The analysis of the relative contribution of each margin is very important to determine which policies can be more efficient to foster trade at the aggregate, geographic, product or firm level. We use the whole universe of firm level transaction data to analyse the relative contribution of these margins to changes in Spanish trade flows during the 1997–2007 period. We first apply the methodology proposed by Bernard et al. (2009) to decompose trade variation over time into three components: net entry of firms, pr…
The Variation of Export Prices Across and within Firms
This paper uses transaction-level trade data to analyse the differences in export prices across and within Spanish manufacturing firms in the year 2014. The transactional nature of the database uncovers sizable differences in the price that an exporter charges for the same product and destination. These differences are related to the number of goods covered within each product category, volume discounts and vertically differentiated varieties. Export prices are positively correlated with firms’ productivity, destination markets’ GDP per capita and distance to Spain. These latter results suggest that Spanish exporters compete in quality.
Estimating the gravity equation with the actual number of exporting firms
Para estimar correctamente el efecto de los costes de comerciar sobre las exportaciones de las empresas, la ecuación de gravedad debe controlar por el número de empresas que opera en el mercado internacional. Debido a la ausencia de datos, estudios anteriores han controlado esta variable mediante técnicas econométricas que también pueden generar estimaciones sesgadas. Para superar estos problemas este trabajo estima una ecuación de gravedad utilizando una nueva base de datos de la OCDE y EUROSTAT , que incluye el número de empresas exportadoras en cada relación bilateral. Nuestros resultados muestran que no controlar el margen extensivo genera sesgos muy importantes en la estimación de los …
Does complexity explain the structure of trade?
This paper analyzes whether complexity, measured by the number of skilled tasks that are performed in production, explains countries commodity trade structure. We modify the Romalis ( ) model to incorporate advantage differences in complexity across commodities together with differences in the number of mistakes made by workers in the production process in developed and developing countries as a source of comparative advantage. Our model predicts that the share of developed countries in world trade increases with products complexity. Empirical tests confirm this prediction. Moreover, we find that complexity complements the explanation provided by skillintensity on countries commodity trade …
New exporters benefit more from information spillovers
Using the universe of Spanish export transactions over 2000–2012, this paper explores empirically whether the choice of destinations among experienced and new exporters is affected by the number an...
Why firms set different export prices? Evidence from Spain
Using firm-level export data for the 2010–2014 period, we investigate the variation of export prices across and within Spanish manufacturing firms. We find that more productive firms set higher exp...