State Foreign Export Patterns

The pattern of U.S. state exports to foreign destinations—which states export which goods to which destinations—has not been studied in detail despite the high profile of exports in the public consciousness. Currently there is not a unified description of facts characterizing exports for all states, destinations, and manufacturing subsectors. I combine research methods from plant- or firm-level and country-level empirical international trade on a cross section of state export data to list nine stylized facts. I also compare some of these facts to those in Eaton, Kortum, and Kramarz (2004, 2010) to show what differs.