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Is "learning-by-exporting" important? Micro-dynamic evidence from Colombia, Mexico and Morocco

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Author Info
Sofronis Clerides
Saul Lach
James Tybout

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Abstract

Is there any empirical evidence that firms become more efficient after becoming exporters? Do firms that become exporters generate positive spillovers for domestically-oriented producers in their industry or region? In this paper we analyze the causal links between exporting and productivity using firm-level panel data from three semi-industrialized economies. Representing export market participation and production costs as jointly dependent autoregressive processes, we look for evidence that firms' stochastic cost process shifts when they break into foreign markets. We find that relatively more efficient firms become exporters, and that their costs are not affected by previous export market participation. This implies that self-selection of the more efficient firms into the export market, and not earning-by-exporting, explains the efficiency gap between exporter and non-exporters previously documented in the literature. Further, we find some evidence that exporters reduce the costs of breaking into foreign markets for domestically oriented producers, but do not appear to help these producers become more efficient.

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Paper provided by Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.) in its series Finance and Economics Discussion Series with number 96-30.

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Date of creation: 1996
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedgfe:96-30

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Related research
Keywords: Colombia ; Exports ; Morocco ; Mexico;

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Aitken, B. & Hanson, G.H. & Harrison, A.E., 1994. "Spillovers, Foreign Investment and Export Behavior," Papers 95-06, Columbia - Graduate School of Business.
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  2. Bernard, Andrew B. & Bradford Jensen, J., 1999. "Exceptional exporter performance: cause, effect, or both?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 1-25, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  3. Roberts, Mark J. & Tybout, James R., 1995. "An empirical model of sunk costs and the decision to export," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1436, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
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  4. Richard Baldwin, 1989. "Sunk-Cost Hysteresis," NBER Working Papers 2911, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Guilkey, David K. & Murphy, James L., 1993. "Estimation and testing in the random effects probit model," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 301-317, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Tybout, James R. & Westbrook, M. Daniel, 1995. "Trade liberalization and the dimensions of efficiency change in Mexican manufacturing industries," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1-2), pages 53-78, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Haddad, Mona, 1993. "How trade liberalization affected productivity in Morocco," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1096, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
  8. Evenson, Robert E. & Westphal, Larry E., 1995. "Technological change and technology strategy," Handbook of Development Economics, in: Hollis Chenery† & T.N. Srinivasan (ed.), Handbook of Development Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 37, pages 2209-2299 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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