This paper uses a tailor-made new data set of 3,390,871 observations for German exports to non-EU countries at the firm-product-destination level in 2011 to investigate the link between the amount of firms' exports and the difference in time zones between Germany and the destination countries. The results indicate that including firm and product level heterogeneity is important. When distance to destination countries is controlled for, time zones only decrease exports for smaller exporters and for intermediate goods. The quantity of exports declines with increasing time difference within a firm for a given product for exports to the West (where time difference to Germany is negative) but not the East.

This paper uses information on more than 160 million export and import transactions by German firms from 2009 to 2012 to document the decisive role of multi-market traders that are active on many foreign markets, where a market is defined as a combination of a good traded and a country traded with. Using merged information from trade transactions and from surveys conducted by the statistical offices it is shown that, controlling for detailed industry affiliation, the number of foreign markets a firm from manufacturing industries is active on as an exporter or importer is higher in firms that are larger, older and foreign owned and that have higher labor productivity, human capital intensity and R&D intensity. With the exception of labor productivity these results are valid ceteris paribus, too. All these results from a descriptive empirical investigation are in line with hypotheses that are derived from the literature on the links between firm characteristics and the extensive margins of foreign trade.

Recently, new data on international trade in goods by German firms became available that are based on transaction level data collected by the customs (for trade with partners outside the European Union) or reported by the firms when trading with partners inside the EU (for the statistics on intra-EU trade). The data cover detailed information on the goods traded, its value, its weight, and the country of destination (for exports) or origin (for imports). In short, the data do not only show “who trades and how much”, but also “who trades how much of which goods of which value and which weight with firms from which countries”. Furthermore, this information is available not only for firms from manufacturing industries, but for firms from all parts of the economy. Transaction level data that include information on the German firm involved in the transaction have been prepared by the Federal Statistical Office for the reporting years 2009 onwards. These data have been used in a number of studies that shed light on various aspects of Germany’s trade in goods for the first time. This survey summarizes what we have learnt from these studies. 

This paper uses information on import transactions by German firms from 2009 to 2012 merged with information on characteristics of the importers taken from surveys by the Statistical Offices to document that a large share of importers engage in multiple import sourcing by importing the same good from more than one source country in a year and that a large share of total imports is due to multiple sourcing. It is shown that the probability of multiple import sourcing and the share of imports from multiple sourcing in total imports increase with firm productivity and firm size after controlling for detailed industry affiliation.

This paper uses information on all export transactions of goods by German firms with countries outside the European Union from 2009 to 2014 to document for the first time the patterns of export participation at the firm-good-destination level over time and to investigate the link between the duration of export patterns and characteristics of destination countries. It turns out that only 6.5 percent of all combinations were recorded in each year, while more than half of all patterns are only observed once. In line with theoretical hypotheses, the likelihood of permanent trade patterns increases within a firm with proximity and market size of destination countries.

This article contributes to the literature by using newly released comprehensive transaction-level data on all exports and imports to document facts about the amount of intra-good trade - the simultaneous export and import of identical goods by one firm - in Germany. Combined data for trade transactions and for characteristics of a representative large sample of trading firms are then used to report differences between firms that export and import different goods only (inter-good traders) and firms that engage in the simultaneous export and import of identical goods (intra-good traders). We find that the share of intra-good trade in total trade was some 17% in Germany in 2012. Intra-good trade matters. This share differs widely between broadly defined groups of goods and between industries. Controlling for detailed industry affiliation, intra-good traders differ significantly from inter-good traders - they are larger, more human capital intensive, more productive, have a higher R&D intensity and are more profitable. The data, however, are not rich enough to reveal the direction of causality between intra-good trade and firm performance and to investigate empirically the reasons why some firms engage in intra-good trade.

This article uses a new, tailor-made data set to investigate for the first time the links between innovation activities (measured by employees active in research and development) and the extensive margins of exports (number of destination countries; number of goods exported) for manufacturing enterprises in Germany, the third largest exporter of goods on the world market. It documents that more innovative firms outperform less innovative firms at both margins of exports—they export more goods, and they export to a larger number of countries. All of these differences are statistically highly significant and large from an economic point of view. 

This paper presents a tabular survey of 147 empirical studies for 39 countries, plus 8 studies for multiple countries, that use transaction level data on exports or imports of firms. I hope this survey is useful for readers who want to get an impression of the huge number of different topics that have been investigated with transaction level data for a large number of countries already; who want to learn whether transaction level data have already been used for a particular (maybe, their own) country, by whom they have been used to investigate which topics, and what the important results found are; who have access to transaction level data and an idea how to use them, and who want to find out whether others pursued the same or a similar topic already; who want to compare results from their own study based on transaction level data to results from other (similar, neighbor) countries and who are looking for suitable studies; who have access to transaction level data and who are looking for studies based on data from other countries that they can replicate with their data to uncover and investigate differences across countries, or to contribute to the unravelling of stylized facts that hold across countries (and time).

This article uses a tailor-made new data set of 7 580 251 observations for German exports at the firm-product-destination level to estimate a gravity equation and to investigate the link between the amount of firms’ exports and the distance to destination countries. It is shown that, in line with stylized facts based on aggregate data, the quantity of exports declines significantly with distance within a firm for a given product.