0000000000240113
AUTHOR
Juan A. Máñez-castillejo
Does Firm Size Affect Self-selection and Learning-by-Exporting?
The trade literature has long discussed the existence of some benefits attributed to exporting, among others, the improvement of firm productivity. This paper examines whether firm size plays a role in this supposedly favourable relationship between exporting and total factor productivity (TFP). To examine this, we investigate, separately for large and small firms, whether firms starting to export perform better ex ante (self-selection) than non-exporting firms and, conditional on this fact, if they are also more productive ex post (learning-by-exporting). With this purpose, we use both stochastic dominance and matching techniques. The dataset is a representative sample of Spanish manufactu…
Self-Selection into Exports: Productivity and/or Innovation?
Abstract Recent research has related the firm decision to export with firm innovation activities and productivity. The aim of this paper is to disentangle the direct and indirect links through which self-selection into exports, coming both from productivity and innovation, may operate. For this purpose we use Spanish manufacturing firm data for the period 1990–2000, drawn from the Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales. The main results we obtain can be summarized as follows. First, there is a self-selection into exports direct effect coming from productivity. Second, there is also a self-selection indirect effect into exports stemming from productivity to the probability of exporting thr…