Trade intermediation by producers*

This paper shows that manufacturing exporters export goods that they have not produced and thus also act as trade intermediaries. The geographical dimension of the data reveals that al-most half of these exports of "sourced" products are purely intermediated: to many destina-tions, firms export sourced products only. We find that this type of intermediation is ubiquitous across firms, products, and destinations, and is robust to a battery of alternative def-initions. These findings show that trade intermediation by producers (TIP) is not solely driven by carry-along trade, where produced and sourced products are bundled when exported. Our decomposition of TIP highlights that trade intermediation should be identified at the firm -product-destination level. The prevalence of pure intermediation for all manufacturing ex-porters, including the largest ones, suggests that intermediation plays an important role in firms' participation and success in international markets. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.