Trade Intermediation by Producers

Résumé

This paper shows that manufacturing exporters export goods that they have not produced and thus also act as trade intermediaries. The geographical dimension of the data reveals that almost half of these exports of “sourced” products are purely intermediated: to many destinations, ﬁrms export sourced products only. We ﬁnd that this type of intermediation is ubiquitous across ﬁrms, products, and destinations, and is robust to a battery of alternative deﬁnitions. These ﬁndings show that trade intermediation by producers (TIP) is not solely driven by carry-along trade, where produced and sourced products are bundled when exported. Our decomposition of TIP highlights that trade intermediation should be identiﬁed at the ﬁrm-product-destination level. The prevalence of pure intermediation for all manufacturing exporters, including the largest ones, suggests that intermediation plays an important role in ﬁrms’ participation and success in international markets.

Mots-clés

international trade; intermediaries; carry-along trade; multi-product firms;

Codes JEL

F12: Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies • Fragmentation
F14: Empirical Studies of Trade
L2: Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior