Evaluating the impact of economic policies on international trade and economic integration.

International trade broadens a firm’s consumer base and can open up the opportunity for further product specialization. For small open economies, it is essential that many firms find their way to the export market to avoid being trapped in local business cycles. Two chapters of the dissertation focus on economic policies that are aimed at enhancing firms’ export performance. The impact of these economic policies is evaluated applying methods from the treatment effects literature. The samples were carefully constructed so that the essential assumptions of stable unit treatment value and unconfoundedness would be satisfied. In the first Chapter, we evaluate the initial location decision of Chinese startups and its impact on export value and the composition of export destinations. The variables of interest are STIP and ETDZ, indicators of whether a firm is located in a Science and Technology Industrial Park (STIP) or in an Economic and Technological Development Zone (ETDZ). Compared to outside firms, we find that firms locating in an ETDZ achieve much higher export values, driven by higher volumes of trade and numbers of destinations. Firms locating in a STIP perform best on quality dimensions. In particular they fetch higher export prices and have more success exporting to high-income countries. In the second Chapter, we evaluate the impact of export promotion by Flanders Investment and Trade on various export performance measures, such as the firm’s propensity to export and the number of export destinations and total export volume. We use probit estimations as benchmark for the region-specific export propensities, and verify that results do not significantly change when using other estimation techniques. For the intensive margin measures, we compute double robust estimators. We find evidence that export promotion increases the propensity to start exporting, especially to destinations outside the EU single market. In line with the literature, we show more generally that the program raises the number of product and destination markets served by existing exporters. Economic integration is the process of reducing bureaucratic barriers within a geographic region, to increase trade flows and competitiveness, and sometimes even to introduce a common monetary and fiscal policy. The EU internal market assures free movement of goods, at least in theory. In practice, online retailers impose barriers on cross-border online trade. The European Commission aims to create a Digital Single Market to ban such barriers. The last chapter of the dissertation lays out the relevant facts of the recent political agenda of the EU and establishes stylized facts incorporating segmentation policies and price data of hybrid retailers. It introduces a highly tractable theoretical model—featuring a two-tier utility structure and CES preferences in the lower tier—that aims to explain why not all consumers in the EU may benefit from an undifferentiated approach to a forced online market integration.nrpages: 130status: publishe