TY  - JOUR
AU  - Rose,Andrew K.
TI  - The Foreign Service and Foreign Trade: Embassies as Export Promotion
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11111
PY  - 2005
Y2  - February 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11111
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11111.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Andrew K. Rose
Haas School of Business Administration
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720-1900
Tel: 510/642-6609
Fax: 510/642-4700
E-Mail: arose@haas.berkeley.edu
AB  - As communication costs fall, foreign embassies and consulates have lost much of their role in decision-making and information-gathering. Accordingly, foreign services are increasingly marketing themselves as agents of export promotion. I investigate whether exports are in fact systematically associated with diplomatic representation abroad. I use a recent cross-section of data covering twenty-two large exporters and two-hundred import destinations. Bilateral exports rise by approximately 6-10% for each additional consulate abroad, controlling for a host of other features including reverse causality. The effect varies by exporter, and is non-linear; consulates have smaller effects than the creation of an embassy.
ER  -