The Impact of Trade Promotion Services on Canadian Exporter Performance

30 Pages Posted: 24 Oct 2011

See all articles by Johannes Van Biesebroeck

Johannes Van Biesebroeck

K.U.Leuven; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Emily Yu

Government of Canada - Foreign Affairs and International Trade

Shenjie Chen

Government of Canada - Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT)

Multiple version iconThere are 3 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 16, 2011

Abstract

We evaluate the impact of the export promotion program delivered by the Canadian Trade Commissioner Service on various dimensions of export performance. Over the 1999-2006 time period we study, Canadian firms successfully diversified their exports to destinations beyond the United States and smaller firms increased their share of total exports. Both of these achievements are explicit aims of the program, but in order to make causal inferences we rely on various identifying assumptions from the treatment effects literature. The results indicate very robustly that the program had an effect at the intensive margin, boosting the average level of exports to given product-destination markets. Effects at the extensive margins of trade, increasing the number of export destinations or number of products exported, are smaller and more sensitive to the identification assumption. This finding differs from previous studies for several Latin American countries where extensive margin effects were most robust. One reason is that the Canadian program was most effective for larger firms and for firms already active on several export markets.

Keywords: export promotion, treatment effect, heterogeneous firms

JEL Classification: F13, F14, L15

Suggested Citation

Van Biesebroeck, Johannes and Yu, Emily and Chen, Shenjie, The Impact of Trade Promotion Services on Canadian Exporter Performance (September 16, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1948429 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1948429

Johannes Van Biesebroeck (Contact Author)

K.U.Leuven ( email )

Naamsestraat 69
B-3000 Leuven
Belgium
+3216326793 (Phone)
+3216326796 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.econ.kuleuven.be/public/N07057/

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

Emily Yu

Government of Canada - Foreign Affairs and International Trade ( email )

125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G2
United States

Shenjie Chen

Government of Canada - Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) ( email )

125 Sussex Drive
Ottawa K1A 0G2, Ontario
Canada
613-944-0376 (Phone)
613-944-0375 (Fax)

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