Firms in International Trade
Firms in International Trade
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DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1015617
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发表时间：
2006-09
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Bernard;J. Jensen;S. Redding;Peter K. Schott
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Bernard;J. Jensen;S. Redding;Peter K. Schott
在国际贸易漫长的历史中，大部分时间都忽视了公司在商品和服务流动中的作用。传统的贸易理论从比较优势的角度解释了国家之间的货物流动，也就是说，不同国家和不同行业的生产机会成本不同。即使是在赫尔普曼和克鲁格曼之后，关注差异化品种和规模报酬递增的研究也继续保留了代表性企业的特征。(1)然而，代表性企业的假设，虽然大大提高了一般均衡分析的易处理性，但在数据中被着重拒绝。在过去的十年里，我的研究一直试图从下面探索国际贸易：了解异质性公司在塑造国际贸易及其对生产力增长和福利的影响的决定。我与J. Bradford詹森的早期工作是出于一个简单的问题：我们对从事贸易的公司了解多少？当时的答案是“很少”，我们最初的努力集中在寻找公司层面的数据和描述出口公司的世界。我们的第一项研究比较了整个美国制造业的出口商和非出口商，并建立了一系列关于出口工厂和公司的事实。(2)有两个主要结果引人注目。首先，在任何时候，只有一小部分公司是出口商。即使在被认为美国具有比较优势的部门，如仪器，大多数公司也只为国内市场生产。同样，有些公司甚至在纺织品和服装等净进口部门也在出口。第二，即使在同一行业和地区，出口国与非出口国也有很大的不同。与非出口型国家相比，出口型国家的规模更大、生产力更高、工资更高、使用的熟练工人更多，技术和资本密集度也更高。在与约阿希姆·瓦格纳（Joachim Wagner）一起对德国企业进行的相关研究中，我再次发现了出口商和非出口商之间存在系统性差异的模式，随后许多作者的研究证实，这些模式在各种行业、地区、时间段和不同经济发展水平的国家都很强大。(3)出口与生产率这一早期研究提出的最大问题是出口状况与生产率之间正相关关系的性质，即出口是否会导致工厂生产率的提高。布拉德福德詹森的研究表明，“潜在”出口商在进入外国市场前几年就有了更好的特征，包括更高的生产率、更高的工资和更大的规模。(4)然而，最重要的发现是，出口商的生产率增长并不高，即使他们有较高的生产率水平。在未来一年里，今天的出口国在生产率增长方面相对于非出口国没有优势，在某些方面，实际上在生产率增长方面表现明显落后。作为一个补充问题，我们问，更高的生产率是否会增加工厂成为出口商的可能性。对美国和德国的研究都发现了选择高生产率企业进行出口的证据，以及进入出口市场的大量沉没成本的证据。(5)这项实证研究得出的有力结论是，高生产率企业能够支付进入外国市场的沉没成本，但一旦进入，它们就不会获得额外的生产率提升。然而，不应夸大生产率在形成总体出口反应方面的作用。对美国出口繁荣决定因素的研究警告说，在20世纪80年代末和90年代初的出口急剧扩张中，相对于汇率和外国收入增长，美国生产率的提高仍然发挥了次要作用。…
For most of its lengthy history the field of international trade largely ignored the role of the firm in mediating the flow of goods and services. Traditional trade theory explained the flow of goods between countries in terms of comparative advantage, that is, a variation in the opportunity costs of production across countries and industries. Even the research focusing on differentiated varieties and increasing returns to scale that followed Helpman and Krugman continued to retain the characterization of the representative firm. (1) However, the assumption of a representative firm, while greatly enhancing the tractability of general equilibrium analysis, is emphatically rejected in the data. My research over the past decade has been an attempt to explore international trade from below: to understand the decisions of heterogeneous firms in shaping international trade and their effects on productivity growth and welfare. Firm Heterogeneity and Trade My early work with J. Bradford Jensen was motivated by a simple question: what do we know about firms that trade? The answer at the time was "very little" and our initial efforts focused on locating firm-level data and describing the world of exporting firms. Our first study compared exporters and non-exporters for the entire U.S. manufacturing sector and established a set of facts about exporting plants and firms. (2) Two major results stand out. First, only a small fraction of firms are exporters at any given time. Even in sectors where the United States is thought to have comparative advantage, such as Instruments, a majority of firms produce only for the domestic market. Similarly, some firms are exporting even in net import sectors such as Textiles and Apparel. Second, exporters are substantially and significantly different than non-exporters, even in the same industry and region. Exporters are dramatically larger, more productive, pay higher wages, use more skilled workers, and are more technology-and capital-intensive than their nonexporting counterparts. In related work on German firms with Joachim Wagner, I again found these patterns of systematic differences between exporters and non-exporters and subsequent research by numerous authors has confirmed them to be robust across a wide range of industries, regions, time periods and countries at varied levels of economic development. (3) Exporting and Productivity The biggest question raised by this early research was the nature of the positive correlation between export status and productivity, that is, whether exporting leads to higher plant productivity. Research done with J. Bradford Jensen established that "potential" exporters have better characteristics years before they enter a foreign market, including higher productivity, higher wages, and larger size. (4) However, the most important finding was that exporters do not have higher productivity growth even though they have higher levels of productivity. Today's exporters have no advantage in terms of productivity growth relative to non-exporters over the next year, and over some horizons actual significantly underperform in terms of productivity growth. As a complementary question, we asked if higher productivity increases the probability of a plant becoming an exporter. Studies on both the U.S. and Germany find evidence for the selection of high productivity firms into exporting as well as evidence of substantial sunk costs to entering the export market. (5) The strong conclusion from this empirical work is that high productivity firms are able to pay the sunk costs of entering foreign markets but that, once in, they do not receive an extra productivity kick. However, the role of productivity in shaping aggregate export responses should not be overstated. Work on the determinants of the U.S. export boom cautioned that improved U.S. productivity still played a minor role relative to exchange rates and foreign income growth in the dramatic expansion of exports in the late 1980s and early 1990s. …