1 We acknowledge .nancial support of the European Coommission under the grant CIT5-028812 (Dyn-regDynamic regions in a knowledge driven global economy). The usual disclaimer applies. AbstractFirm productivity and export decisions are closely related to innovation activity. Innovation may play a more important role in the decision to start exporting, and successful exporting may drive process innovation. This suggests that the causality between innovation and exporting may run in both directions. Using detailed micro-data from innovation surveys, industrial production surveys, and trade information for Slovenian .rms in 1996-2002, we investigate the bidirectional causal relationship between firm innovation and export activity. We find no evidence for the hypothesis that either product or process innovations increase the probability of becoming a first-time exporter, but we do .nd evidence in both the innovation survey and the industrial production survey that exporting leads to productivity improvements. These, however, are likely to be related to process rather than product innovations, and are observed only in a sample of medium and large .rst-time exporters.

Firm heterogeneity, exports, learning-by-exporting, difference-in-differences, matching,

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The crisis has hit the corporate sectors of the new EU member states from Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) more than those of most old EU member states. Taking full account of firms' heterogeneity, the paper analyses what kind of CEECs firms' characteristics make some of them more resilient to crisis than the others. Using panel VAR system on a large firm-level dataset we estimate the responses of firms' employment and investment to cyclical demand shocks and financial shocks. Controlling for industry, time and country differences, we split firms according to size, age, export status, foreign versus domestic ownership and pre-vs. during crisis growth in order to compare firms' responses between distinct splits. We find that cyclical drop in demand decreases firms' employment in subsequent periods but there is substantial heterogeneity among different types of firms. Old and especially small old firms react more swiftly, whereas downward adjustment in employment is less severe in exporters and in foreign-owned firms. On the other hand, investment does not respond to demand shocks per se, but to free cash flow component of the business cycle. It is large young firms that are the most and small young firms that are the least responsive to financial shocks in terms of investment activity. In contrast to employment adjustments, exporters adjust their investment activity to cash flow availability to a larger extent than non-exporters. Differences in country specific settings also show important impact on firms' resistance to crisis. The quality of legal institutional environment in a country is positively correlated with the employment sensitivity to shocks but it has no discernible effect on investment sensitivity. On the other hand, political and economic institutions make employment more stable over the cycle.

This paper explores the idea that firms learn from trade by introducing either new products or processes influenced by their trade links with foreign markets. By exploring microdata for Spain, including data on innovation and trade, we find a robust relationship between imports, exports and innovation. The results suggest that firms learn primarily from import links, which enable them to innovate and to 'dress up'for starting to export. This sequencing between trade and innovation, however, is shown to be more pronounced for small firms only and technologically advanced firms.