Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/297117 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Series/Report no.: 
LEM Working Paper Series No. 2023/09
Publisher: 
Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Pisa
Abstract: 
We propose a novel measure to investigate firms' product specialisation: product coreness, that captures the centrality of exported products within the firm's export basket. We study product coreness using firm-product level data between 2018 and 2020 for Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Three main findings emerge from our analysis. First, the composition of firms' export baskets changes relatively little from one year to the other, and products far from the firm's core competencies, with low coreness, are more likely to be dropped. Second, higher coreness is associated with larger export flows at the firm level. Third, such firm-level patterns also have implications at the aggregate level: products that are, on average, exported with higher coreness have higher export flows at the country level, which holds across all levels of product complexity. Therefore, the paper shows that how closely a product fits within a firm's capabilities is important for economic performance at both the firm and country level. We explore these issues within an econometric framework, finding robust evidence both across our three countries and for each country separately.
Subjects: 
International Trade
Diversification
Capabilities
COVID-19
JEL: 
F14
L25
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
868.45 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.