Spillovers and Exports: A Meta-Analysis

This study uses meta-analysis to analyze the empirical literature on spillovers and exports. It collects 3,291 estimated spillover effects from 99 studies. The estimated spillover effects in the literature span a large number of types and measures of both exports and spillovers. As a result, we transform estimates to partial correlation coefficients (PCCs). We analyze these transformed effects using four different versions of Weighted Least Squares estimators, incorporating both meta-analytic “Fixed Effects” and “Random Effects”. Our analysis produces three main findings. First, while we estimate a mean overall effect of spillovers on exports that is statistically significant, the size of the effect is economically negligible. Second, we find evidence of positive publication bias using conventional Funnel Asymmetry Tests. However, the size of the estimated publication bias is small, and disappears in some regressions when other explanatory variables are included in the analysis. Third, using both Bayesian Model Averaging and frequentist WLS estimation, we find that some data, estimation, and study characteristics are significant in some regressions. However, only a few of the characteristics are robust, and none are large in size.