Learning-by-Exporting? Firm-Level Evidence for UK Manufacturing and Services Sectors

Table 1: GB^a turnover (£m) in 2003 based on FAME and ARD by size-bands

FAME___________ FAME

^a Unweighted FAME data covers the UK ^b Size-bands are in £’000 Source: ARD and FAME databases

Table 1 presents the results from weighting the FAME data. The unweighted data
from FAME are dominated by the largest firms (defined as firms with turnover of £7.2
million or above) since this sub-group accounts for over 97% of total turnover.
Weighting the FAME produces a distribution across size-bands that is comparable to
that obtained when using the ARD. This is confirmed in the final column in Table 1,
which shows that the ratio of FAME to ARD turnover by size-band is within a margin
of ±10%. There is a suggestion that even weighted, the FAME data slightly
underestimates the contribution of the smallest firms (and correspondingly
overestimates the importance of the largest firms), but these differences are not likely
to unduly impact on any statistical analysis undertaken using these weighted data.¹⁶
All the subsequent statistical analyses are based on this weighted FAME dataset.

of total FAME turnover. Note also, the ARD does not contain data for Northern Ireland but since this
region is rather small it will not have much of an effect in the weights used.

¹⁶ We have also undertaken a further check of the usefulness of the weighted data on exports
information (other than just turnover) by comparing it to information from the 2004 Community
Innovation Survey (CIS4) that contains information on which establishments exported in 2004. Our
findings suggest that while there are differences across industries, the relative magnitudes of the
estimates of the percentage of firms that export for the two datasets are very similar. See Harris and Li
(2007) for details.

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