International productivity gaps and the export status of firms: Evidence from France and Japan

•We link international productivity gaps and export-participation rates.•We propose a framework to overcome confidentiality restrictions.•We compare the distributions of firm-level total factor productivity across countries.•We find that international productivity gaps are sensitive to the export status of firms.

This paper provides new evidence on international productivity gaps; this evidence is obtained from large-scale firm-level data from the French and Japanese manufacturing industries using non-parametric methodologies designed to overcome confidentiality restrictions. Our primary finding is that international productivity gaps are sensitive to the export status of firms. We also show that productivity differences between French and Japanese exporters vary across export destinations. We propose a simple analytical framework to relate those basic findings to the new models of international trade with heterogeneous firms. Under this framework, international firm-level productivity comparisons provide new insights into the importance of trade-related institutional and policy differences across countries.