This study reports results from an empirical investigation of business services sector firms that (start to) export, comparing exporters to firms that serve the national market only. We estimate identically specified empirical models using comparable enterprise level data from France, Germany,...

Using comprehensive data for West Germany, this paper investigates the determinants of establishment exit. We find that between 1975 and 2006 the average exit rate has risen considerably. In order to test various “liabilities” of establishment survival identified in the literature, we...

Using quantile regression and a rich cross section data set for German manufacturing plants this paper documents that the impact of plant characteristics on export activities varies along the conditional size distribution of the export/sales ratio.

This paper presents the first empirical test with German establishment level data of a hypothesis derived by Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple in a model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either trough exports or foreign direct investment: only the more...

This paper uses an unbalanced panel data set for exporting firms from manufacturing industries in one German federal state, Lower Saxony, to investigate the micro-structure of the recent export boom. Looking at data for 1995/96 to 2001/02 it is demonstrated that a considerable number of plants...

While the role of exports in promoting growth in general, and productivity in particular, has been investigated empirically using aggregate data for countries and industries for a long time, only recently have comprehensive longitudinal data at the firm level been used to look at the extent and...

"Researchers in Germany have nowadays access to confidential micro data compiled from official statistics in a way that could not have been dreamt of just a few years ago. This paper describes the new institutions that grant data access - most importantly the research data centers located inside...

Dieser Aufsatz nutzt geheime Einzeldaten aus amtlichen Erhebungen in niedersächsischen Industriebetrieben, um einen Blick hinter die Kulissen des Exportbooms zu werfen. Hierbei zeigt sich eine ausgeprägte Heterogenität der Exportdynamik zwischen Betrieben innerhalb einer Hauptgruppe,...

This paper uses a large plant level panel data set from Germany and a matching approach to look for causal effects of starting to export on plant performance. We find positive effects on growth of employment, labor productivity, and wages. Dieses Diskussionspapier untersucht, welche Effekte der...