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What Really Grows Exports?
by Kirk Kardashian Mar 25, 2014
http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/newsroom/articles/what-really-grows-exports
Professor Andrew Bernard reframesthe conversation on how to increase trade from developing nations.
In 2012, the World Bank released a document called the “TradeCompetitiveness Diagnostic Toolkit,” which was written to help developing nations increase their exports and therebygrow their economies. The link between exports and economic growth is wellestablished. Studies have shown, for example, that exporting firms are onaverage more productive, more capital intensive, and pay better wages thannon-exporters. As the document notes, “the richer countries become, the morethey tend to trade; and countries that are most open to trade grow richer morequickly.” It’s no wonder, then, that advising countries about export-boostingpolicies falls squarely(正好) within the World Bank’s mission to end extreme poverty by 2030.（越富有的国家，越多贸易。贸易越开放的国家，增长越快。所以世界银行要鼓励发展中国家促进出口，以摆脱贫困。）
For years, the World Bank and othersimilar organizations have looked to academic research to understand themicroeconomic factors that increase exports. The stories told in that researchsuggest that new exporterstend to start small and, if they survive their first year of exporting, growextremely rapidly. Those conclusions have in turn generated many papersthat attempt to explain the start-small-grow-fast phenomenon, attributing it tothe benefits of learning, experimentation, and understanding the reliability ofpartners.（很多文献认为新出口企业先开始很小，只要能够存活一年，后面增长速度飞快。于是大家都来解释这种现象，发现是学习、试验及对合作伙伴可靠性理解的原因造成的。）
But Andrew Bernard, the Jack ByrneProfessor of International Economics at Tuck, has seen a problem with thisnarrative: it’s based on export data that has been aggregated and thenannualized, rendering it easily expressible but also misleading. Bernard andco-authors Renzo Massari, Jose-Daniel Reyes, and Daria Taglioni lay out theircorrective analysis in “Exporter Dynamics, Firm Sizeand Growth, and Partial Year Effects,” a new working paper for theNational Bureau of Economic Research.（但Bernard认为不对。）
The problem they describe issurprisingly simple. Say two firms enter the export market in 2012, one inJanuary and the other in November. Assume their monthly performance isidentical. The annualized data will show 12 months of sales for the firm thatentered in January, and just two months of sales for the firm that started inNovember. Therefore, the January firm will appear six times bigger for 2012. Ifthe November firm lasts through the end of 2013, the annualized data will showa huge increase in its sales from 2012 (where there were only two months oftransactions) to 2013 (where there were 12 months of transactions).（Bernard认为数据以年为单位造成了这种错觉，如果以月度数据为单位，则不会“认为新出口企业先开始很小，只要能够存活一年，后面增长速度飞快。”）
Both conclusions run counter to the reality of exporting. “The ideathat exporters start especially small is not consistent with an existing bodyof work that says there are big costs to enter the market,” Bernard says. “Andthe rapid growth doesn’t align with the fact that if you start at the correct(larger) level, you will grow at a normal rate.”（Bernard认为初创出口公司特别小的观点与较大的出口市场进入成本是不相符的，且快速的增长也与大公司增长表现出稳定增长率不符。）
Bernard and his co-authors show the（危险）ofannualized data by adjusting for partial-year effects in Peruvian（秘鲁） customsdata from 1993-2009. They chose Peru because it is a relatively big,middle-income nation that has emphasized exports as a source of economicgrowth. In all, the data covers 2,352 firms who exported for at least fourconsecutive years.（秘鲁是一个中等收入国家，且其增长主要靠出口。）
The authors first report on exportlevels of new firms. The annualized data shows that 75 percent of new entrantsare smaller than their within-sample average. When adjusted for partial yeareffects, however, the new exporters look much like other firms: just 46 percentare smaller than average. “Adjustingfor the month of entry and allowing first-year exports to represent 12 monthsfor each firm raises the size of entrants substantially,” they write.（年度数据显示，初创出口企业的75%小于平均值，但月度数据显示，只有46%。）
The partial-year effect on firmgrowth rates is even larger. The calendar-year data paints quite an optimisticpicture for firms who survive their first year of exporting: 146 percent growthfrom Year 1 to Year 2. For the next two years, growth evens out at about 30percent per year. But adjusting for the starting month of exporting hasprofound repercussions（影响）. Firms nolonger skyrocket in their first year, but grow at a reasonable pace of 25percent, which then becomes 20 and 23 percent in years two and threerespectively. “That’s a phenomenal difference,” Bernard says. “It’salmost unbelievably big.”（年度数据显示，存活一年后的企业，接下来一年增长146%，然后稳定在年增长率30%。年度数据显示，没有出现火箭式增长，接下来一年25%，稳定在23%。）
How has this discrepancy managed toevade academics? In part, because researchers often received data from governmentsin annualized form, and they didn’t think to question it. But it’s also due tohuman nature. “We are heavily conditioned to think in calendar years,” Bernardsays. “We want to know who sold the most in 2012, not from July 2011 to June2012. We just don’t respond naturally to that.”
For organizations like the WorldBank, the implications of the partial-year effect are wide-ranging. New exporters are probably moreimportant for economic growth than was previously thought. That meanspolicy experts will need to reassess the determinants of exporter success, shifting the focus away fromlearning and experimentation to reducing the barriers that prevent small andmedium firms from entering export markets—things like expensive exportlicenses and onerous （麻烦的）incorporation rules.（初创出口企业对经济增长的作用可能比以前大家认知的更加重要，专家们需要重新评估出口成功的因素，进而转向减少中小企业进入出口市场的障碍）
“I argued for a long time that if you wanted to grow exports in the first two years, youneeded to focus on the big firms,” Bernard says. “That’s still true, butthis research suggests it’s a little less true. And that’s good news because itmeans the dynamism in the market is robust.”
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