TY - JOUR AU - Eaton,Jonathan AU - Eslava,Marcela AU - Kugler,Maurice AU - Tybout,James TI - Export Dynamics in Colombia: Firm-Level Evidence JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 13531 PY - 2007 Y2 - October 2007 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13531 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w13531.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jonathan Eaton Department of Economics Penn State University 608 Kern Graduate Building University Park, PA 16802-3306 Tel: (814) 865 - 8871 Fax: (814) 863 - 4775 E-Mail: jxe22@psu.edu Marcela Eslava Universidad de Los Andes Carrera 1 Este No 18 A -70. Bloque C Bogota, Colombia Tel: 571-339-4949 Fax: 571-332-4492 E-Mail: meslava@uniandes.edu.co Maurice Kugler JFK School of Government Harvard University 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA 02138 Tel: 617/496-0897 Fax: 617/496-8753 E-Mail: maurice.kugler@gmail.com James R. Tybout Department of Economics Penn State University 517 Kern Graduate Building University Park, PA 16802 Tel: 814/865-4259 Fax: 814/863-4775 E-Mail: jtybout@psu.edu AB - Using transactions-level customs data from Colombia, we study firm-specific export patterns over the period 1996-2005. Our data allow us to track firms' entry and exit into and out of individual destination markets, as well as their revenues from selling there. We find that, in a typical year, nearly half of all Colombian exporters were not exporters in the previous year. These new exporters tend to be extremely small in terms of their overall contribution to export revenues, and most do not continue exporting in the following year. Hence export sales are dominated by a small number of very large and stable exporters. Nonetheless, out of each cohort of new exporters, a fraction of firms go on to expand their foreign sales very rapidly, and over the period of less than a decade, these successful new exporters account for almost half of total export expansion. Finally, we find that new exporters begin in a single foreign market and, if they survive, gradually expand into additional destinations. The geographic expansion paths they follow, and their likelihood of survival as exporters, depend on their initial destination market. ER -