The impact of the 2008-2009 financial crisis on European firm-level exports:

In this paper, I estimate the impact of the 2008-2009 financial crisis on European firm-level exports. I construct a cross-country experiment using data from 5,872 manufacturing firms from the European Firms in a Global Economy program (EFIGE). The results show that there is a negative effect of the financial crisis on firm-level exports growth. Firms from countries that are more severely affected by the financial crisis experience a larger decline in value of exports than firms from countries that are less severely affected by the financial crisis. In addition, the results show that importing firms from countries that are more severely affected by the financial crisis experience an increase in value of exports compared to their non-importing counterparts. I find no evidence that the crisis effect of the financial crisis on firm-level exports is different for firms that carry out innovation or for firms that are reliant on external finance for their production activities. The findings of this research suggest that firm characteristics affect the impact of a financial crisis on firm-level exports performance.