International Productivity Gaps and the Export Status of Firms: Evidence from France and Japan

International audienceThis paper provides new evidence on the international productivity gaps; this evidence is built from large scale firm-level data from the French and Japanese manufacturing industries. Our primary finding is that international productivity gaps are sensitive to the export status of firms. We establish that the productivity gap between French and Japanese exporters differs systematically from the average industry gap--this gap is wider in the industries in which Japan has a productivity lead and narrower in the industries in which France has a productivity lead. We relate this basic finding to the new models of international trade with heterogeneous firms. Under this framework, our data predict that Japanese firms, on average, face higher trade costs than French firms