Antidumping Protection hurts Exporters:Firm-level evidence from France

This paper empirically evaluates the effects of antidumping measures on the exports of protected firms. While antidumping protection raises the domestic sales of the more 'traditional?non-exporting firms on the protected market with about 5%, it negatively affects the firm-level exports of similar products as the protected ones. Export sales of protected firms fall by almost 8% compared to a relevant control group of unprotected firms. The drop in firm-level exports more than doubles for firms that are global, i.e. firms with foreign affiliates. Measured at the product-level, extra-EU exports of goods protected by antidumping fall by 36% while exports to target countries fall by as much as 66% following protection. Protection also affects the extensive margin of exporters but to a lesser extent. Initial exporters face a marginally higher probability to stop exporting during protection compared to unprotected firms. Finally, we find that the productivity of exporters falls while that of non-exporters rises during antidumping protection. We offer a number of plausible explanations for our findings arising from the heterogeneous firm literature. We also discuss the importance of our findings for policy.