Export Dynamics in Colombia: Transactions Level Evidence

We examine Colombian export transaction data from customs records in several dimensions. We begin with some basic statistics on the number and frequency of export transactions by a firm, overall and across individual markets. We then decompose the variation in overall exports into the number of transactions and the size of the average transaction, both at the aggregate level and for individual firms to explore gravity equations, where the patterns of exports and numbers of transactions are related to the distance with respect to the destination. The analysis is carried out both at the aggregate and the firm level. Then we explore the relationship between patterns of transactions numbers and shipment modes. Our results show great heterogeneity in the patterns of frequency and number of transactions across firms; the average firm sent about 75 shipments abroad in 2005, while the firm with largest number of transactions that same year dispatched more than 26,000 shipments. Moreover, while close to 35% of firms in the sample report a single export transaction over the period, for most firms with multiple transactions the average span between two transactions is less than a month. Part of this heterogeneity is shown to be related to the distance with respect to the destination market: firms exporting to more distant destinations make less frequent shipments than firms exporting to markets that are closer. This suggests that there are fixed costs per shipment inducing declining marginal cost of higher shipment volume. These patterns imply that, at the aggregate level, transactions numbers are the primary source of variation in exports. The variability in the numbers of transactions also explains an important part of the well-known negative relationship between aggregate exports and distance to a specific destination.Export transaction frequency; fixed shipment costs and scale economies in transportation; destination distance, average shipment volume and number of shipments. Classification JEL: F10; F12; F14.

Export Dynamics in Colombia: Firm-Level Evidence

Using transactions-level customs data from Colombia, we study firm-specific export patterns over the period 1996-2005. Our data allow us to track firms' entry and exit into and out of individual destination markets, as well as their revenues from selling there. We find that, in a typical year, nearly half of all Colombian exporters were not exporters in the previous year. These new exporters tend to be extremely small in terms of their overall contribution to export revenues, and most do not continue exporting in the following year. Hence export sales are dominated by a small number of very large and stable exporters. Nonetheless, out of each cohort of new exporters, a fraction of firms go on to expand their foreign sales very rapidly, and over the period of less than a decade, these successful new exporters account for almost half of total export expansion. Finally, we find that new exporters begin in a single foreign market and, if they survive, gradually expand into additional destinations. The geographic expansion paths they follow, and their likelihood of survival as exporters, depend on their initial destination market.

A study of the legal provisions for tort liability by schools and private parties engaged in off-campus activity

The original problem which was proposed for this study is as follows: What are some of the provisions being made for secondary schools in providing for tort liability when students engage in off-campus curricular activity for mutual benefit of private party and the student, in absence of legal provision in the California State Education Code

The U of O\u27s Greatest Grad

After leaving the Indiana University School of Law in 1986, Maury Holland became the dean at the University of Oregon School of Law. He stepped down as Oregon’s dean in 1992 and continued teaching until his retirement in 2008. Holland died in 2020. On March 13, 2001, Holland delivered the following lecture to the Round Table of Oregon. The lecture profiles University of Oregon Law Alumni Yosuke Matsuoka, who received his law degree in 1910 and went on to serve as a Japanese diplomat and the country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs