Autore
Castellani, Davide

Titolo
Export Behavior and Productivity Growht: Evidence from Italian Manifacturing Firms
Periodico
Università degli studi di Urbino, Facoltà di Economia. Istituto di Scienze economiche - Quaderni di economia, matematica e statistica
Anno: 2001 - Fascicolo: 61 - Pagina iniziale: 1 - Pagina finale: 33 - Supplemento: - Parte:

This paper provides econometric evidence supporting the hypothesis that export behavior cause learning effects. The idea is that exporting firms obtain efficiency gains through spillovers and the expolitation of economies of scale in a larger market. Following the existing literature, learning-by-exporting is modeled as a change, induced by export behavior, in the stichastic process governing firm's productivity. Empirically, this is implemented specifying cross-section regressions of TFP growht on measures of export behavior, controlling for past TFP growht and other firm's characteristics. Using data on a sample of Italian manufacturing firms, it is found, consistently with most previous works, that exporters do not exhibit faster TFP growht. Nevertheless, TFP growht has a positive and significant relation with firm's export intensity. In other words, only firms with a substantial involvement in exporting activity have a significantly higher rate of TFP growht. This result, consistent with a similar work using a sample Chinese firms, suggests that learning-by-exporting is by no means simply the outcome of the presence into the export market. Indees, learning requires commitment and experience of foreign activities, which in turn are associated with the relative importance of foreign activities and the lenght of time since entry in the export market.




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