Bo Young Choi agreed with the points raised by the Siew Yean Tham and Shandre Mugan Thangavelu. What is fixed cost? The literature investigates differences in fixed cost by exporting country. Use firm size as variable cost. Intermediate product firms use intermediaries, but use of intermediaries depends on countries to export to.
Wen-jen Hsieh said that given the large size of the data set, there should be more discussion of characteristics for descriptive analysis. For example, in the paper total factor productivity for all firms is greater than that for exporting firms. Perhaps different kinds of industries with different capital intensities may help us see why exporting firms have lower total factor productivity. She also asked how it is possible to link the different data sets used by the study as well as the definition of medium- versus small-sized firms.
Jie Li thought that proposition 1 is counterintuitive: less-productive firms...