A League of Their Own: Services Exporters within Goods Exporters

Abstract

This paper sheds light on the intertwined nature of goods and services exports at the firm level. In the literature, services are considered as inputs in the production of goods rather than objects of trade in themselves. However, many firms produce and trade services with goods. In this perspective, this paper offers a systematic analysis of services exports in Turkey, which constitutes a relevant developing country example, by using rich, firm-level data for the period 2003-2008. Our results indicate that not only services firms but also manufacturing firms export services. Firms exporting both goods and services are consistently bigger than firms exporting only goods or only services. However, goods exporting multinational firms in Turkey are larger than multinationals that export both goods and services. Goods exporters with a larger size, higher labor productivity and capital intensity are more likely to export services as well. Furthermore, having a wide spectrum of goods to export increases the odds in favor of becoming a services exporter.