The Performance of Trading Firms in the Services Sectors – Comparable Evidence from Four EU Countries

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe analyse common stylized facts of services firms engaged in trade in a comparative study across four EU member countries. We find that, though relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms, services firms have similar traits. Services firms are more likely to import than to export. Their prevalent type of trade is trade in goods. The complexity of trade activities is increasing in firm size and productivity. Two-way traders outperform one-way traders. Services are more likely to be traded by firms already engaged in trade of goods. Changes in trading status by either adding another dimension of trade (imports, exports) or another type of product (goods, services) are infrequent and are associated with significant pre-switching premia. In contrast, learning effects from switching trading status are uncommon. This evidence points to significant fixed cost of being engaged in trade. Thus, the literature on heterogeneous firms is able to explain the sorting of firms into trading and non-trading firms in the services sectors as well.

Firm heterogeneity and international trade in services

“…Whereas not indicated in the table, the differences between goods and services exporters are statistically significant at the 1% level with services exporters being larger, more productive and paying higher wages relative to goods exporters. 16 Firms exporting both goods and services are the largest and have the highest productivity and wages, similar to the recent findings of Breinlich and Criscuolo (2011), Damijan et al (2015) and Haller et al (2014) for European firms. Figure 1 presents the TFP distributions (kernel density) for non-exporting firms, goods exporters and services exporters, showing that the productivity distributions of goods/services exporters are higher than those of non-exporters and that the productivity distribution of services exporters is higher than that of goods exporters.…”

“…The results for wage level show a similar pattern: the average wages of pure goods exporters, pure services exporters and goods and services exporters are 9.7 log points (10.2%), 13.9 log points (14.9%) and 15.9 log points (17.2%) greater than those of non-exporters (panel A, column (6)). According to the Wald test results, the wage premiums of pure services exporters as well as both goods and services exporters are significantly greater than that of pure goods exporters at the 1% The highest productivity premium of firms exporting both goods and services is the same as the findings for European firms (Breinlich & Criscuolo, 2011;Damijan et al, 2015;Haller et al, 2014). level.…”

“…According to Breinlich and Criscuolo (2011), pure services exporters in the United Kingdom are smaller than pure goods exporters, although the productivity differences of these two groups are small and not statistically significant. Damijan et al (2015) and Haller et al (2014) find that the productivity of Even when comparing pure goods exporters with pure services exporters, the productivity and wages of the latter are far higher than those of the former. MORIKAWA | 277 pure services exporters in four EU countries is not necessarily higher than that of pure goods exporters.…”

“…However, these studies do not present separate analyses of goods and services trade. The few firm-level studies that separately analyse services trade include Breinlich and Criscuolo (2011) for UK firms, Kelle, Kleinert, Raff, and Toubal (2013) for German firms, Damijan et al (2015) and Haller et al (2014) for firms in four EU countries (Finland, France, Ireland and Slovenia) and Malchow-Møller, Munch, and Skaksen (2015) for Belgian firms. Among these, Breinlich and Criscuolo's (2011) study is the most notable in this area by presenting stylised facts on firms engaging in services trade using data on the exports and imports of UK firms from 2000 to 2005.…”

Firm heterogeneity and aggregate business services exports: Micro evidence from Belgium, France, Germany and Spain

“…() and Damijan et al. () who analyse services and goods trade for Finland, France, Ireland and Slovenia. These studies present important insights into the characteristics of firms engaged in services trade among these four countries, such as export intensities, export premia and the evolution of productivity for firms switching their export status.…”