Comments and Questions

Comments on “Imported Inputs and Egyptian Exports: Exploring the links” This article deals with an interesting question, namely, the link between imported inputs and exports in the Egyptian case: • The paper is a nice piece of research. • The empirical work is interesting and econometrically robust.• The authors chose the appropriate methodology to answer his empirical question. • The paper is very well-written.• The question is well formulated and answered in a consistent way. I detailed now some of the points that I find puzzling in the current version of the paper. At the descriptive level:• It is important to present the sectoral distribution of firms importing inputs (whether they are firms producing high or low value-added products) At the empirical level:• I think it is important to include a geographical variable showing whether the firm is located in Cairo or not. This is likely to have a significant impact on the probability of exporting.• I am wondering why the authors do not include firm dummies to control for any unobserved characteristics of the firms. • Since imported inputs might improve the quality of exports, it would be interesting to examine whether imported inputs help firms exporto to more than a destination or not (market extensive margin) o to more than a product or not (product extensive margin)