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American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 10 2017

Exporter Dynamics and Partial-Year Effects

Andrew B. Bernard1; Esther Ann Bøler2; Renzo Massari3; Jose-Daniel Reyes3; Daria Taglioni3

1 Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, 100 Tuck Hall, Hanover, NH 03755, CEPR, and NBER (email: ) · 2 Imperial College Business School, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK, CEP, and CEPR (email: ) · 3 World Bank, 1818 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433 (email: )

open access

Abstract

Two identical firms who start exporting in different months, one each in January and December, will report dramatically different exports for the first calendar year. This partial-year effect biases down first-year export levels and biases up first-year export growth rates. For Peruvian exporters, the partial-year bias is large: first-year export levels are understated by 54 percent and the first-year growth rate is overstated by 112 percentage points. Correcting the partial-year effect dramatically reduces first-year export growth rates, raises initial export levels, and almost doubles the contribution of net firm entry and exit to overall export growth.

DOI
10.1257/aer.20141070
Volume
107
Issue
10
Pages
3211-3228
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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