Details
New publication [06.07.23]
Evidence from Recent Microdata on the Activities of German Firms in International Trade
A firm-level view on trade: decomposing German exports into intensive and extensive margins
In this paper, Matthias Fauth (Hohenheim and IAW), Benjamin Jung (Hohenheim) and Wilhelm Kohler (Tübingen, IAW) use the novel data base "AFiD-Panel Außenhandelsstatistik" to analyze recent patterns of German firm-level trade. They assess how global German firms are by looking at the joint distribution of the number of products they trade and the number of countries they trade with. Moreover, they examine the importance of firms mainly engaged in trade intermediation, as opposed to production. Most importantly, they provide a rich description of heterogeneity among German firms by decomposing their trade relationships into intensive margins (value of trade) and extensive margins (number of firms, products and countries). Finally, they reveal strong positive correlations between and within importing and exporting margins, supporting the presence of firm-level complementarities implied by recent theory.
The paper appeared as CESifo Working Paper No. 10523 and is forthcoming in the Journal of Economics and Statistics. It is part of the project “Improving Methods for Policy Analysis of Foreign Trade and Investment” financed by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK). The project aims at generating merged firm-level data on trade in goods and services as well as FDI. Cooperating partners are the Kiel Institute of the World Economy (IfW, leading), the Institute for Applied Economic Research (IAW), Tubingen, the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) and the Deutsche Bundesbank.
