Results

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics:

Import liberalization as export destruction? Evidence from the United States

In trade models with scale economies import liberalization reduces exports within industries by shrinking real market potential. We find this export destruction mechanism reduced US export growth following the permanent ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Growth insured: export credit insurance and trade

We estimate the causal effect of short-term export credit insurance (ECI) on firm-level exports using administrative data from China?s export credit agency merged with customs and tax records. Exploiting quasi-random var...Read more...

Journal article

Research Policy:

Mapping digital businesses with big data: some early findings from the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT industries. Researchers and policymakers thus need a clear picture of digital businesses, but conventional datasets and typologies tend to lag real-world change. We ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade diversion and labor market outcomes

In 2018 and 2019, the US administration increased tariffs on imports from China. Did these tariffs lead to more US imports from other countries such as Mexico? Using highly disaggregated data on the universe of Mexican f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Firm-level technology adoption in times of crisis

We investigate the diffusion of frontier technologies across German firms before and during the Covid-19 crisis. Our analysis tracks the nature, timing, and pandemic-related motivations behind technology investments, usi...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

High moments for superstar exporters

Aggregate exports are highly concentrated in a small group of firms, which are generally more productive than other firms. This column shows that productivity shocks generate different responses of aggregate exports depe...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade, skills and productivity

We examine how firms adjust their production and technology in response to exogenous trade shocks. We develop a model in which revenue TFP can be distinguished from quantity TFP, and where skill upgrading is explicitly e...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy:

Opposing firm-level responses to the China shock: output competition versus input supply

We decompose the "China shock" into two components that induce different adjustments for firms exposed to Chinese exports: an output shock affecting firms selling goods that compete with similar imported Chinese goods, a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Regional productivity differences in the UK and France: from the micro to the macro

We propose a new data resource that attempts to overcome limitations of standard firm-level datasets for the UK (like the ARD/ABS) by building on administrative data covering the population of UK firms with at least one ...Read more...

Journal article

Regional Studies:

Trade in creative services: relatedness and regional specialization in the UK

Creative services have become an important, but understudied, part of global trade. This paper presents new evidence on the transformation, geography and industrial relatedness of creative service exports in the UK, usin...Read more...

Journal article

Economics Letters:

Firm-destination heterogeneity and the distribution of export intensity

We derive closed-form expressions for the distribution of export intensity when firm-destination-specific revenue shifters are distributed gamma, Frechet and Weibull in a two-country model of trade with isoelastic demand...Read more...

Blog

Vox EU:

The economics of Brexit: a new eBook

What has Brexit meant for the UK economy? Six years on from the referendum, and over a year since the implementation of the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement, this column introduces a new eBook which brings together ...Read more...

External report

The big Brexit

Leaving the EU represents the largest change in the UK's relationship with the rest of the world in nearly half a century. It is a profound change in economic governance, that will reorient production and trade away from...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Trade disruptions in the wake of Brexit

A dramatic fall in the value of UK imports from the European Union relative to the rest of the world occurred when the post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation Agreement came into effect. What's more, according to research by R...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of the European Economic Association:

The twin peaks of the export intensity distribution

Received wisdom suggests that most exporters sell most of their output domestically. We show, however, that the distribution of export intensity varies substantially across countries and is often bimodal, displaying ?twi...Read more...

Journal article

World Economy:

The trade impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

Using a gravity-like approach, we study how COVID-19 deaths and lockdown policies affected countries' imports from China during 2020. We find that a country's own COVID-19 deaths and lockdowns significantly reduced its i...Read more...

External report

Enduring strengths

A decade of stagnant living standards, weak productivity and low investment combined with a coming decade of major change - driven by Covid-19, Brexit and Net Zero - mean that it is crucial for the UK to renew its econom...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

UK trade in the wake of Brexit

This paper studies the impact of Brexit on the UK's trade with the EU relative to its trade with the rest of the world. We find no evidence that uncertainty and anticipation effects led to a significant decline in relati...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

Import liberalisation as export destruction: evidence from the United States

Holger Breinlich, Elsa Leromain, Dennis Novy and Thomas Sampson look at US-China trade relations to examine how import liberalisation brings down import costs and increases competition, but can also lead to lower export ...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The 2020 trade impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

Worldwide merchandise trade flows decreased significantly in 2020, as Covid-19 disrupted economic activity across the globe. This column analyses how various pandemic-related factors shaped international trade flows. Spe...Read more...

Blog

VoxEU:

The trade and welfare benefits of deep trade agreements

Deep trade agreements are widespread and have taken the world beyond tariff liberalisation in goods trade. As the importance of global supply chains and the services sector increased across the world, shallow tariff redu...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms for the period 1995?2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source servi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing trade: evidence from China and the US

We study how management practices shape export performance using matched production-trade-management data for Chinese and American firms and a randomized control trial in India. Better managed firms are more likely to ex...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The interconnections between services and goods trade at the firm-level

In this paper we study how international trade in goods and services interact at the firm level. Using a rich dataset on Belgian firms during the period 1995-2005, we show that: i) firms are much more likely to source se...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Twin peaks

Received wisdom suggests that most exporters sell the majority of their output domestically. In this paper, however, we show that the distribution of export intensity not only varies substantially across countries, but i...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

On the comparative advantage of US manufacturing: evidence from the shale gas revolution

This paper provides novel empirical evidence of the effects of a plausibly exogenous change in relative factor prices on U.S. manufacturing production and trade. The shale gas revolution has led to (very) large and persi...Read more...

CentrePiece article

Fracking: the boost to US manufacturing

Research by Rabah Arezki, Thiemo Fetzer and Frank Pisch shows that the surge in shale gas production ? `fracking? ? since the early 2000s has not only made the United States the world?s largest producer of natural gas. I...Read more...

Journal article

Environment and Planning A:

Ethnic diversity and business performance: Which firms? Which cities?

A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm?city interactions remain more or less unexplored. Ethnic diversity may help firm performance by in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

On the comparative advantage of US manufacturing: evidence from the shale gas revolution

This paper provides novel empirical evidence of the effects of a plausibly exogenous change in relative factor prices on United States manufacturing production and trade. The shale gas revolution has led to (very) large ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Institutions and export dynamics

We study how contract enforcement and export experience shape firm export dynamics in an environment with incomplete information. We show that exporters start with higher volumes and sell for longer periods in countries ...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of International Economics:

Spatial exporters

In this paper, we provide causal evidence that firms serve new markets which are geographically close to their prior export destinations with a higher probability than standard gravity models predict. We quantify the imp...Read more...

CEP occasional paper

Mapping information economy businesses with big data: findings for the UK

Governments around the world want to develop their ICT and digital industries. Policymakers thus need a clear sense of the size and characteristics of digital businesses, but this is hard to do with conventional datasets...Read more...

CEP report

Internationalization and Innovation of Firms: Evidence and Policy

We use a representative and cross-country comparable sample of manufacturing firms (EFIGE) to document patterns of interaction among firm-level internationalization, innovation and productivity across seven European coun...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Exporters, Importers and Credit Constraints

This paper analyses the interaction between credit constraints and trading behaviour. I construct a unique dataset containing firm-level trade transactions data, balance sheets and credit scores from an independent credi...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Institutions and Export Dynamics

We study the role of contract enforcement in shaping the dynamics of international trade at the firm level. We develop a theoretical model to describe how agents build reputations to overcome the problems created by weak...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Spatial Exporters

In this paper, we provide causal evidence that firms serve new markets which are geographically close to their prior export destinations with a higher probability than standard gravity models predict. We quantify the imp...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade Crisis? What Trade Crisis?

We provide an analysis of the 2008-2009 trade collapse using microdata from a small open economy, Belgium. First, we find that changes in firm-country-product exports and imports occurred mostly at the intensive margin: ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

The Extent of Collective Bargaining and Workplace Representation: Transitions between States and their Determinants. A Comparative Analysis of Germany and Great Britain

Industrial relations are in flux in many nations, perhaps most notably in Germany and Britain. That said, comparatively little is known in any detail of the changing pattern of the institutions of collective bargaining a...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Productivity and Firm Selection: Quantifying the 'New' Gains from Trade

We discuss how standard computable equilibrium models of trade policy can be enriched with selection effects without missing other important channels of adjustment. This is achieved by estimating and simulating a partial...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Service Traders in the UK

We provide a novel set of stylized facts on firms engaging in international trade in services, using unique firm-level data on services exports and imports in the United Kingdom in 2000- 2005. Less than 10% of firms trad...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Does Family Control Affect Trade Performance? Evidence for Italian Firms

This paper examines whether the export decision of firms is affected by their ownership structure, specifically it looks at whether family control is an obstacle to entering foreign markets. The underlying assumption is ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Imports and Exports at the Level of the Firm: Evidence from Belgium

This paper explores a newly-available panel data set merging balance sheet and international trade transaction data for Belgium. Both imports and exports appear to be highly concentrated among few firms and seem to have ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Falling Trade Costs, Heterogeneous Firms and Industry Dynamics

This paper examines the response of industries and firms to changes in trade costs. Several new firm-level models of international trade with heterogeneous firms predict that industry productivity will rise as trade cost...Read more...