Abstract
This paper shows that manufacturing exporters export goods that they have not produced and thus also act as trade intermediaries. The geographical dimension of the data reveals that almost half of these exports of “sourced” products are purely intermediated: to many destinations, firms export sourced products only. We find that this type of intermediation is ubiquitous across firms, products, and destinations, and is robust to a battery of alternative definitions. These findings show that trade intermediation by producers (TIP) is not solely driven by carry-along trade, where produced and sourced products are bundled when exported. Our decomposition of TIP highlights that trade intermediation should be identified at the firm-product-destination level. The prevalence of pure intermediation for all manufacturing exporters, including the largest ones, suggests that intermediation plays an important role in firms' participation and success in international markets.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 103693 |
| Journal | Journal of International Economics |
| Volume | 140 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 8 Jan 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We are grateful to the Editor, two anonymous referees, Maarten Bosker, Chad Bown, Paola Conconi, Gregory Corcos, Laura Hering, Otto Swank, Hylke Vandenbussche, Gonzague Vannoorenberghe, Bauke Visser, Yuan Zi, and seminar participants at the Erasmus School of Economics, the ETSG Bern conference, the FREIT's Empirical Trade Online Seminar, the Leuven-Louvain Trade Workshop, and the Université catholique de Louvain for helpful comments and suggestions. The empirical analyses for this paper have been conducted at the Turkish Statistical Institute under a confidentiality agreement. The results and opinions shown here are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any agency of the Turkish government. Rebeyrol acknowledges funding from ANR under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d'Avenir program).
Funding Information:
We are grateful to the Editor, two anonymous referees, Maarten Bosker, Chad Bown, Paola Conconi, Gregory Corcos, Laura Hering, Otto Swank, Hylke Vandenbussche, Gonzague Vannoorenberghe, Bauke Visser, Yuan Zi, and seminar participants at the Erasmus School of Economics, the ETSG Bern conference, the FREIT's Empirical Trade Online Seminar, the Leuven-Louvain Trade Workshop, and the Université catholique de Louvain for helpful comments and suggestions. The empirical analyses for this paper have been conducted at the Turkish Statistical Institute under a confidentiality agreement. The results and opinions shown here are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of any agency of the Turkish government. Rebeyrol acknowledges funding from ANR under grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d'Avenir program).
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