Whatever next? Export market choices of New Zealand firms**Access to the data used in this study was provided by Statistics New Zealand in accordance with security and confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act 1975 and the Tax Administration Act 1994. The results in this paper have been confidentialized to protect individual businesses from identification. See an earlier version of this paper, Fabling et al. (2009) for the full disclaimer. The authors are solely responsible for the views expressed. The authors wish to thank Statistics New Zealand for access to the data, Jacques Poot for discussions on rare event models, and Motu Economic and Public Policy Research seminar participants and two anonymous referees for valuable suggestions and comments

We examine product and market entry choices of New Zealand exporters, using enterprise†level data on firm performance and merchandise trade. For firms already exporting, we ask: What determines their choices about what and where to export? General and specific prior trade experience play an important role in determining firms' future export activities, as do the export activities of other firms in the local area (a learning effect). These results are robust to the inclusion of other export determinants, including the macroeconomic performance of destination countries, exchange rate movements, and the past performance of the exporting firm.