Exporting and ownership contributions to Irish manufacturing productivity growth

This paper combines a literature identifying the sources of productivity growth with a literature exploring differences between the characteristics of exporters and non-exporters to examine the contributions of exporters and non-exporters to aggregate labour productivity growth in the Irish manufacturing sector between 1998 and 2004. Using the Breunig and Wong (2007) decomposition technique, we uncover the contributions to aggregate labour productivity of continuing, entering and exiting firms based on exporting and ownership status. We find that within-firm productivity growth of exporters drives overall productivity growth, with significant differences apparent between productivity growth rates of foreign and domestic owned establishments.