How frequently firms export? Evidence from France

This paper proposes studying export frequency as an additional margin of international trade. While extensive margins of products and destination define the scope of firm’s export, export shipment frequency is determined by sale method choice and cost structure of the trade technology. We define export shipment frequency as the per annum number of shipments of a given product, by a firm to a given destination. In order to more deeply understand the trade cost structure and sale methods, we estimate gravity models on export frequency and other margins of trade using monthly firm-product-destination level export data from France. We show that in key predictions of the model are validated. During the recent trade collapse, we also find a great deal of stability in shipment frequency with a modest adjustment to declining GDP.