Organization and export performance

•Present new facts on the internal organization of firms and export performance.•In the aggregate there is an ordering of the distribution of organizations.•The number of layers in firms is positively correlated with export performance.•Firms with a greater number of layers export more products to more destinations.•Introducing organization into heterogeneous firm models can explain these facts.

This paper presents new facts on firms' internal organization and their export performance. I find an ordering of the distribution of organizations and, both across and within firms, firms' number of layers is positively correlated with their export performance.