Productivity Dynamics and Exports in the French Forest Product Industry

This paper investigates aggregate productivity dynamics of the French forest product industry based on firm-level data from 1994 to 2016. The main objectives of the paper are to investigate aggregate productivity growth in the industry, while taking market entry and exit into account. Further, aggregate productivity growth is investigated with respect to firms' export status and with respect to their domestic and export economic activity. Decomposing the productivity growth into the contribution of incumbent, entering, and exiting firms, the results show a considerable slowdown during the economic crisis from 2007 on, which is mainly induced by decreasing productivity improvements and inefficient resource allocation among incumbent firms. Moreover, the study shows that exporters contribute more to aggregate productivity growth than non-exporters. However, investigating the contribution of firms' domestic and export economic activities on aggregate productivity growth, I find that the aggregate productivity growth is mainly related to firms' domestic economic activity.