includes information on 188 firms belonging to five industries11, for five years (from
1997 to 2001)12.
These surveys include plant-based13 data on sales and input purchases (together with
detailed information on export and import), labour and human resources, investment,
technology and R&D expenditures, ownership as well as data on objective aspects of the
investment climate.
Referring to the 188 firms for which there are five consecutive years of data, 71 percent
of them are exporter14, 38 percent of them are importers15 and combining the flows 31
percent are both importers and exporters16. Considering the industry beak down, we have
54 firms in the Drugs and Pharmaceutical sector17, 31 firms in the Electronic Consumer
Goods and the Electrical White Goods industries18 and 103 firms in Textile and
Garments sectors19.
Table 1 reports some descriptive statistics on the characteristics of the firms in the
sample. Consistently across sectors, exporters tend to be larger in size than the average
firm in the sample and importers are, on average, even larger than exporters. Regarding
the share of firms that have at least one foreign shareholder, this is higher among firms
engaged in trade practices and in particular, importers are more likely owned by foreign
individuals than exporters. The same pattern is followed by public ownership although
the share of firms that have a public shareholder is quite negligible in all the sub-
samples.
11 The industries covered are Garments, Textiles, Drugs and Pharmaceutical, Electronic Consumer Goods
and Electric White Goods.
12 The small number of firms for which information is reported both in the first and in the second round of
the survey is mainly due to high rates of “non response”. Therefore it is not possible to make any
hypothesis on exit or on entry rates. For this reason, the analysis will be conducted on the balanced panel.
13 only one plant belonging to each firm is considered, even if the survey covers multi-plant firms
14 there are 133 firms for which, in the five years considered, the average ratio of total exports to total
sales is positive.
15 There are 72 firms for which, in the five years considered, the average ratio of total imports to total
inputs is positive.
16 There are 61 firms that for at least one of the years considered have both imported intermediate inputs
and exported part of their output.
17 73 percent of them are exporters, 64 percent of them are importers and 53 percent are both importers-
exporters.
18 45 percent of exporters, 21 percent of importers-only and 13 percent of both importers-exporters
19 76 percent of exporter, 19 percent are importers and 28 percent are both importers-exporters