International Trademarking and Regional Export Performance

Abstract

Analysis of international trade at the sub-national region level is perennially hampered by the lack of granular data. We contribute a new analytic approach for understanding trade performance of sub-national regions using a newly constructed international trademark filing dataset. We show that international trademarks provide an indicator of regional export activity by analyzing US data aggregated to the industry and State level. Our new dataset shows more detailed information about exporting businesses than have previously been unavailable such as the company name, industry, market and location. It is therefore valuable for public sector export promotion programs as well as business seeking timely information about the behavior of their competitors.

Keywords: Intra-national regional exports, trademarks, business analytics, nowcasting

JEL Classification: F17, O34