[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-112797-en":3,"doc-seo-112797-105":29,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":20,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":13,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":27,"read_time":28},112797,1374391974468,"Eden","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0",8,"Research & Report","The Origins and Dynamics of Export Superstars - Research Focus","Export superstars drive export growth and diversification and are typically firms that begin large. Firm-level manufacturing trade data from 32 developing countries show that the top five exporters generate about one-third of exports, nearly half of export growth, and roughly one-third of growth tied to diversification over five years. Within countries and industries, export growth rises with the top-five firms’ export share. Superstars are mostly already large or newly formed, rarely emerging from small-firm ranks, and are mainly foreign-owned producers.","Pub lic Disclosure Authorized Pub lic Disclosure Authorized  \nThe World Bank Economic Review, 34(1), 2020, 28–47 doi: 10.1093/wber/lhy011 Article  \nThe Origins and Dynamics of Export Superstars Caroline Freund and Martha Denisse Pierola  \nAbstract  \nExport superstars are important for export growth and diversification and are typically born large. Firm-level data on manufacturing trade from 32 developing countries show that the top five exporters account for on average nearly one-third of exports, 47 percent of export growth, and a third of the growth due to export diversification over a five-year period. Within countries and industries, export growth is positively correlated with the share of exports in the top five firms. Most of the top five exporters were already large five (or eight) years ago or are new firms; it is rare for these export superstars to emerge from the bottom half of the distribution of firm sizes. For countries where detailed data exist, superstars are producers, not traders, and are primarily foreign owned.  \nJEL classification: D22, L11, L25, F14  \nKeywords: firm size distribution, export growth, export diversification, granularity, foreign ownership  \n1. Introduction  \nThe dominance of large firms in aggregate exports has been widely documented in the existing trade literature. Bernard, Jensen, and Schott (2009) show that the top 1 percent of exporters in the United States are responsible for 80 percent of the total export value. Similarly, Eaton, Kortum, and Kramarz (2011) display a highly skewed distribution of the size of exporters for French firms, and Mayer and Ottaviano (2008) document a similar pattern for seven European countries. While several of these studies  \nMartha Denisse Pierola (corresponding author) is a Senior Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank; her email address [is mpierola@iadb.org. Caroline Freund is Director of Trade](is mpierola@iadb.org. Caroline Freund is Director of Trade), Regional Integration and Investment Climate at the World Bank; her email address is [cfreund@worldbank.org. The](cfreund@worldbank.org. The) authors are grateful to Mirvat Sewadeh and Vanessa Uchiyama for their assistance in conducting interviews with export superstars in Jordan, Peru, and Tanzania and to Sarah Oliver for doing research on the characteristics of the top five exporters across a larger group of countries. The authors are also grateful to Erhan Artuc, Richard Baldwin, Juan Blyde, Chad Bown, Deniz Civril, Jonathan Eaton, Ana Fernandes, James Harrigan, Gary Hufbauer, Hiau Looi Kee, Sam Kortum, Aart Kraay, Ricardo Lopez, Aaditya Mattoo, Ferdinando Monte, Emanuel Ornelas, Justin Pierce and Andres Rodriguez-Clare for useful comments on earlier versions of this paper and to seminar participants at the London School of Economics, Yale University, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Empirical Investigations in International Trade Conference, the Eastern Economic Association Annual Meetings, the workshop on Trade Policy for Growth organized by the World Bank, the International Growth Center and the Mid-Atlantic Trade Workshop. The findings expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the institutions they are affiliated with. This work was supported financially by the governments of Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom through the Multi-Donor Trust Fund for Trade and Development. The authors also acknowledge the generous financial support from the World Bank research support budget and the Knowledge for Change Program (KCP), a trust-funded partnership in support of research and data collection on poverty reduction and sustainable development housed in the office of the Chief Economist of the World Bank ([www.worldbank.org/kcp](www.worldbank.org/kcp)).  \n© The Author(s) 2018 . Published by Oxford University Press on ","cbCaig3Bum4j6Tdk","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaig3Bum4j6Tdk","pdf",1579252,1,20,"English","en",105,"# Abstract\n# Introduction\n## Export dominance and skewed firm size distributions\n## Motivation and research questions\n# Main findings on origins and dynamics\n## Concentration among top exporters\n## Correlation with industry and country growth\n## Patterns of emergence and firm characteristics\n## Ownership and production versus trading","[{\"question\":\"What does the paper show about the concentration of exports among top firms?\",\"answer\":\"The top five exporters account for about one-third of exports on average and nearly half of export growth over a five-year period.\"},{\"question\":\"How do export superstars affect export growth and diversification?\",\"answer\":\"Export superstars contribute to export growth and also to diversification, with a substantial share of growth linked specifically to diversification outcomes.\"},{\"question\":\"Where do export superstars originate in terms of firm size and ownership?\",\"answer\":\"Most superstars are already large years earlier or are new firms, and they rarely come from the bottom half of the firm-size distribution; 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