Learning-by-Exporting: Continuous Productivity Improvements or Capacity Utilization Effects? Evidence from Slovenian Firms

Abstract

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

From Innovation to Exporting or Vice Versa? Causal Link between Innovation Activity and Exporting in Slovenian Microdata

“…The industry-speci…c average treatment e¤ects for both the exporting and innovation equation are presented in Table A1 in Appendix. 13 With some notable exceptions, we can see that in majority of industries average treatment e¤ects of the export equation reveal that innovators are more likely to be also exporters, 14 while, similarly, the innovation equation, by and large, con…rms that lagged exporting status has a signi…cant impact on innovation. , , indicate statistical signi…cance at 10%, 5% and 1% level of signi…cance, respectively.…”

“…Among other determinants of exporting status (as suggested in the relevant literature) we also include log of labor productivity (value addded per employee), which captures the possibility that more productive …rms self-select into exporting. Size measured by log number of employees appears as a determinant of both innovation as well as exporting status (Love and Roper, 2002;Barrios et al, 2003;Damijan and Kostevc, 2006). Inclusion of capital intensity and investment in R&D (both in logs) is necessary since …rms with higher capital to labor ratios and greater investments in R&D are more likely to be able to compete in highly competitive mature markets.…”

“…A large portion of Slovene exports is destined to the highly-competitive EU-15 markets (Damijan et al (2007)) and this increases the scope for bene…ts from either positive spillovers in the exporting markets or by raising the productivity of exporting …rms (learning-by-exporting). Damijan and Kostevc (2006) and de Loecker (2007) analyze Slovenian manufacturing …rms and …nd that productivity exhibits a level shift in the year that …rms start exporting. This level shift could be either related to capacity utilization, but also to spillovers and learning e¤ects.…”

Innovation and Internationalization: Relationship and Implications for Management and Public Policy

“…Salomon & Shaver (2005), indicate that exporters may learn from their foreign contacts, adopting new production technologies and thereby increasing their productivity and performance. However, the most unanimous conclusion is that exporters have higher productivity than non-exporters before starting the internationalization process, and no significant productivity advantages are observed among continuous exporters or non-exporting firms respectively over time (Aw, Chen, & Roberts, 2001;Bernard & Jensen, 1999;Damijan & Kostevc, 2006;Delgado et al, 2002;Fafchamps, El Hamine, & Zeufack, 2007;Greenaway & Kneller, 2007) 13 . Therefore, again, the unanimous direction of causality is not that internationalization brings about an increase in 12 The transaction costs and time involved in international sales increase because companies need to find the market information they do not yet possess, promote a brand usually still unknown in the target country, develop the distribution networks, and so on.…”

Learning from Trade Through Innovation: Causal Link Between Imports, Exports and Innovation in Spanish Microdata

“…We start with the cohort of …rms that have innovated for the …rst time in period t (separately for product and process innovators 21 ), hence did not innovate in either t 1 nor t 2, but have been importers from at least t 1 onwards. All of the included …rms did not engage in exports in either of the three periods in question (t 2; t 1, and t).…”