Indirect exporters

Indirect Exporters are defined as firms exporting through a trade intermediary. Despite numerous recent appearances in theoretical work, empirical evidence comparing these firms to uniquely domestic firms and Direct Exporters does not exist. I show that in Eastern Europe these firms do, as predicted by the theoretical literature, lie between domestic firms and Direct Exporters for a range of performance measures. The “Direct Exporter premium” is the more robust finding, while certain ambiguity surrounding the productivity gap between Indirect Exporters and Domestic firms indicates that these two groups may not be as significantly different. JEL: F10, F14 ∗Maison des Sciences Economiques, 106 boulevard de l’Hopital, 75647 Paris Cedex 13. [email protected]. I thank Anders Akerman, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Matthieu Crozet, Ron Davies, Benny Jung, Sebastian Krautheim, Eóin McGuirk and Farid Toubal for helpful comments. I acknowledge financial support from the EU Marie Curie RTN “Globalization, Investment and Services Trade” (GIST). I acknowledge the hospitality of the CEPII, where this paper was partly written. I am, of course, responsible for any remaining errors.