2012年-世界发展银行全球_Exporter_Dynamics_Database_55页_758kb

Exporter Dynamics Database Summary

Core Content

The Exporter Dynamics Database is a comprehensive dataset that provides firm-level information on export activities across 38 developing and 7 developed countries, primarily covering the period 2003–2010. It includes measures of exporter characteristics, growth, and dynamics at different levels of aggregation: country-year, country-year-product, and country-year-destination. The database is designed to support empirical research and policy analysis by offering detailed insights into export behavior and its underlying microeconomic drivers.

Main Points

1. Database Construction

• The database is built using customs data at the exporter-product-destination-year level from 45 countries.
• It contains 15 million unique observations after cleaning and aggregation.
• Data is standardized to the Harmonized System (HS6) for product classification and is free of charge and publicly available at http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/exporter-dynamics-database.

2. Data Cleaning and Aggregation

• Country of origin is defined as the country from which the data is sourced.
• Firm codes are standardized across time within each country, with some countries experiencing changes in coding systems during the sample period.
• Destination is defined according to the UN guidelines, treating territories like Bermuda, Hong Kong SAR, and Macau as distinct destinations.
• Special trade regimes (e.g., free zones) are excluded from the export dataset to avoid overestimation.
• Product classification is adjusted for consistency across HS revisions (HS1996, HS2002, HS2007) through a consolidation process, reducing the number of unique HS codes from 6065 to 4961.
• Oil exports are excluded due to the lack of firm-level data in key oil-exporting countries.

3. Key Measures and Definitions

• The database includes a wide range of measures:
  • Basic characteristics: Number of exporters, entrants, exiters, survivors, and incumbents.
  • Concentration/diversification: Herfindahl Index, share of top exporters, number of products and destinations per exporter.
  • Firm dynamics: Entry, exit, and survival rates.
  • Product and market dynamics: Product entry rates, share of new products, and export volume per product/destination.
  • Unit prices: Export values per exporter, product, and destination.

4. Stylized Facts from the Database

• Fact 1: More developed and larger economies have a larger export base, larger and more diversified exporters, and lower entry and exit rates compared to smaller or less developed economies.
• Fact 2: Intensive margin expansions (increase in average exporter size) contribute more to short-term export growth than extensive margin expansions (increase in number of exporters).
• Fact 3: Entry and exit rates are high and positively correlated, and both are negatively correlated with survival rates, average exporter size, and diversification.
• Fact 4: Number of exporters and top exporter shares are explained by country and sector characteristics, while average exporter size and survival rates are not. This implies that comparative advantage may be more related to firm size than the number of firms.
• Fact 5: Multi-product, multi-destination exporters dominate total exports, but they represent a small share of the total number of exporters.
• Fact 6: Bilateral exports increase with market size and decrease with distance and tariffs, with firm-count dynamics playing a more significant role in long-term export trends than firm-size dynamics.

Key Information

• The database is a product of the World Bank's Trade and Integration Team.
• It is part of an effort to enhance the understanding of export growth microfoundations.
• The dataset is comparable across countries, enabling cross-country analysis.
• The cleaning process ensures data consistency and accuracy, addressing issues such as special trade regimes, territorial name changes, and HS classification updates.
• Confidentiality is maintained by excluding measures when a single firm dominates a country-product-year or country-destination-year cell.

Conclusion

The Exporter Dynamics Database provides new and valuable insights into exporter behavior, firm dynamics, and market structure across different countries. It highlights the importance of firm size, product and destination diversification, and market access in shaping export growth. The database supports empirical analysis and policy discussions by offering a standardized, comprehensive, and detailed dataset on firm-level exports.