Dr Binyam Demena won the award at the 5th Asia Conference on Business and Economic Studies (ACBES 2023) for his paper entitled 'Does export promotion enhance firm-level intensive margin of exports?'
In his paper, Demena questions the impact of export promotion policies and programmes (EPPs) on the intensive margin of exports.
He argues that the impact of these measures, used by many governments to promote an increase in the economic performance of internationally active firms, are ambiguous. His investigation of empirical studies conducted between 2000 and 2020 concludes that over half of the 870 findings showed both positive and negative but insignificant effects. Only about two-fifths of the estimates found a positive and significant effect.
These results beg the question for development studies and for international trade policies whether internationally active firms benefit from such EPPs.
Demena argued that, after filtering for publication bias, firms supported by the EPPs have only about 1% - 8% higher export levels compared to firms that are not treated by the programme.
He further found that support provided through a set of services is the main channel enhancing the intensive margin effect rather than support offered through various forms of financial resources.
ACBES 2023
Demena won the prize during the 5th Asia Conference on Business and Economic Studies held at the University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on 16–18 August 2023.
The conference hosted over 200 participants from more than 33 countries. Demena's article was one of 280 submitted in 39 topic groups.
- Final proceedings of ACBES 2023 including abstracts of papers
- Conference summary
- Assistant professor