Export Variety and Export Performance: Empirical Evidence from East Asia

Does product variety matter for export performance? This has been suggested by the new trade theory. In the present paper, we investigate empirically whether increasing export variety has contributed to the export growth of ten East Asian countries. In the paper we calculate direct measures of export variety and estimate pooled annual export equations for ten East Asian countries. The econometric results suggest that producing highly differentiated export goods gives a competitive advantage which allows to sell more products.