TY  - JOUR
AU  - Clerides,Sofronis
AU  - Lach,Saul
AU  - Tybout,James
TI  - Is "Learning-by-Exporting" Important? Micro-Dynamic Evidence from Colombia, Mexico and Morocco
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 5715
PY  - 1996
Y2  - August 1996
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5715
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w5715.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Sofronis Clerides
E-Mail: s.clerides@ucy.ac.cy

Saul Lach
Department of Economics
Hebrew University
Jerusalem, 91905
ISRAEL
Tel: 972-2-5883253
Fax: 972-2-5816071
E-Mail: saul.lach@huji.ac.il

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  - Is there any empirical evidence that firms become more efficient after becoming exporters?  Do firms that become exporters generate positive spillovers for domestically-oriented producers? In this paper we analyze the causal links between exporting and productivity using firm-level panel data from three semi-industrialized countries.  Representing export market" participation and production costs as jointly dependent autoregressive processes, we look for evidence that firms' stochastic cost processes shift when they break into foreign markets.  We find that relatively efficient firms become exporters, but firms' unit costs are not affected by previous export market participation.  So the well-known efficiency gap between exporters and non-exporters is due to self-selection of the more efficient firms into the export market, rather than learning by exporting.  Further, we find some evidence that exporters reduce the costs of breaking into foreign markets for domestically oriented producers, but they do not appear to help these producers become more efficient.
ER  -