China's policy of encouraging export processing has been the topic of much discussion in the academic literature and policy debate. We use a recently developed econometric approach that allows for time varying “treatments” and estimate economically and statistically significant positive...

The paper presents an empirical analysis of "outsourcing" using establishment-level data for UK manufacturing industries. The authors analyze an establishment's decision to outsource and the subsequent effects of outsourcing on the establishment's productivity. Outsourcing is compared in...

Exporting involves sunk costs, so some firms export whilst others do not. This proposition derives from a number of models of firm behavior and has been exposed to microeconometric analysis. Evidence from the latter suggests that exporting firms are generally more productive than nonexporters....

Empirical questions surrounding the effect of regional trade agreements on international trade have typically been answered with reference to macro-level gravity equations. Prominent within this has been whether they create or divert trade. In this paper, motivated by the recent development of...