A note on firm age and the margins of imports: first evidence from Germany

Abstract

This article uses a new tailor-made data set to investigate the link between firm age and the extensive margins of imports empirically for the first time for Germany. Results turn out to be fully in line with the theoretical considerations. Older firms are more often importers, import more different goods, and import from more different countries of origin.

Keywords:

• imports
• firm age
• import margins
• Germany

JEL Classification:

• F14

Notes

¹ See Wagner (2012) for a review of this literature.

² See Wagner (2014) for a study on the links between firm age and the margins of exports.

³ Note that firms with a value of imports from EU-countries that does not exceed €400 000 do not have to report to the statistic on intra-EU trade. For trade with firms from nonmember countries, all transactions that exceed €1000 are registered. For details, see Statistisches Bundesamt, Qualitätsbericht Außenhandel, January 2011.

⁴ A good is an eight-digit number from the official nomenclature for the statistics of foreign trade.

⁵ Results for pair-wise Kolmogorov–Smirnow tests for the three age cohorts of firms and for both the number of goods imported and the number of countries of origin of imports are fully in line with the results reported in Table 2.