Margins, concentration, and the performance of firms in international trade: Evidence from Japanese customs data

Keiko Ito, Masahiro Endoh, Naoto Jinji, Toshiyuki Matsuura, Toshihiro Okubo and Akira Sasahara
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Toshiyuki Matsuura: Keio Economic Observatory, Keio University

No 2024-017, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University

Abstract: This study is the first to comprehensively investigate international trade at the firm-level using Japan's customs data for the 2014-2020 period. We first decompose international trade into the intensive and extensive margin and show that the intensive margin accounts for around 30% and 40% of the variation in partner country-specific exports and imports, respectively. We next find a substantial concentration of trading firms: in 2017, the top 10% of exporters accounted for 96.6% of all exports, while the top 10% of importers were responsible for 94.6% of all imports. Finally, we match the customs data with other firm-level datasets and estimate the performance premia of exporting firms. Our findings indicate that exporting firms outperform non-exporting firms in all aspects we consider: sales, value added, the number of employees, the capital-labor ratio, productivity, and wages. Interestingly, the exporter premia for value added, labor productivity, and total factor productivity decreased between 2014 and 2016 and then increased until 2019, whereas the exporter premium for the average wage steadily increased.

Keywords: Japan's international trade; customs data; intensive and extensive margin of trade; exporter premia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F14 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2024-06-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eff, nep-ind and nep-int
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:keo:dpaper:2024-017

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