The role of extensive and intensive margins and export growth

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Besedes, Tibor; Prusa, Thomas J.
• 署名单位: Rutgers University System; Rutgers University New Brunswick; University System of Georgia; Georgia Institute of Technology; National Bureau of Economic Research
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2010.08.013
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 371-379
• 关键词: Extensive margin; Intensive margin; Export survival

摘要

We investigate and compare countries' export growth based on their performance at the extensive and intensive export margins. Our empirical approach is motivated by an extension to the Melitz (2003) model of heterogeneous firms in which exporters are subject to a one-time sunk cost and also a per-period fixed cost. With imperfect information a firm may enter export markets but shortly exit when it learns its per-period fixed costs. We apply this insight to disaggregated export data and confirm that indeed most export relationships are very short lived. We then show that the survival issue is a significant factor in explaining differences in long run export performance. We find that developing countries would experience significantly higher export growth if they were able to improve their performance with respect to the two key components of the intensive margin: survival and deepening. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.