This paper looks at a hitherto neglected extensive margin of international trade by investigating for the first time the frequency at which German exporters and importers trade a given good with a given country. Imports and exports show a high degree of lumpiness. In a given year about half of...

This paper uses a unique newly constructed data set to investigate for the first time the link between credit constraints and the extensive margins of exports in Germany, one of the leading actors on the international market for goods. In line with theoretical considerations and comparable...

This paper uses information on all export transactions of goods by German firms with countries outside the European Union from 2009 to 2014 to document for the first time the patterns of export participation at the firm-good-destination level over time and to investigate the link between the...

This paper uses comprehensive high-quality panel data from official statistics for exporting enterprises to investigate the micro-structure of the recent export collapse in manufacturing industries in Germany during the crisis of 2008/2009. Almost all of the decline in exports was due to...

Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality longitudinal data at the enterprise level for Germany, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between exports and profitability. It documents that the positive profitability differential of...

A recent survey of 54 micro-econometric studies reveals that exporting firms are more productive than non-exporters. On the other hand, previous empirical studies show that exporting does not necessarily improve productivity. One possible reason for this result is that most previous studies are...