Are low-productive exporters marginal exporters? Evidence from Germany

A stylized fact from the emerging literature on the micro-econometrics of international trade and a central implication of the heterogeneous firm models from the new new trade theory is that exporters are more productive than non-exporters. It is argued that this exporter-productivity premium is due to extra cost of exporting that can be covered profitably by more productive firms only. Germany is a case in point - exporting firms from manufacturing industries are more productive than non-exporting firms from the same 4-digit industry both on average and over the whole productivity distribution. However, many firms from the lower end of this distribution are exporters. This paper report that these low-productivity exporters are not marginal exporters defined according to the share of exports in total sales, or export participation over time, or the number of goods exported, or the number of countries exported to.