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This paper aims to study the learning-by-exporting effect among small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Specifically, the authors propose a dynamic perspective and suggest that learning-by-exporting is duration-dependent and contingent upon the born global internationalization strategy. In earlier phases of export activities, exporting has had a strong positive effect on SMEs’ innovations, which, however, diminishes over time. This inverted U-shape effect is even more distinct for born global firms.

The authors used longitudinal data with 1,689 Canadian SMEs to test their hypotheses. A two-stage instrumental approach is used to take into account the endogeneity of the born global international strategy on new product innovations.

Born globals learn faster at the early stages of exporting but also restrain their innovations more strongly than gradual internationalizers in the longer run, leveling out the initial learning advantages of newness. Thus, this study suggests that born globals have a significantly different learning trajectory than gradual internationalizers.

To maximize the benefits of exporting on innovation, managers should focus on learning during the initial years of exporting. However, once this period has passed, it is advisable for managers to invest in research and development as well as other innovation activities to complement the learning effect of exporting. Born global firms experience more rapid learning at the initial stage of exporting, but such learning effects wear off quicker later than gradually internationalized firms. For SME managers, this study helps draw their attention to the learning benefits of exporting in the initial years of export participation.

This study corroborates recent studies arguing for a “learning-by-exporting” effect. Providing longitudinal firm-level evidence, the authors also forward a dynamic perspective and show that learning by exporting is duration dependent and contingent upon the market entry strategy pursued by SMEs.

This paper aims to investigate firm‐level interactions between productivity and exporting in Uganda's manufacturing sector.

The paper empirically tested two hypotheses that relate to the dynamic gains from trade and also have tended to dominate the literature; self‐selection and learning‐by‐exporting hypotheses. It employs proxies of self‐selection and learning‐by‐exporting obtained from indices of path dependence to fit maximum likelihood estimates of export behavior.

The results provide support for both hypotheses and it is also found that more experienced exporters reap more productivity gains from learning effects which is in line with the view that knowledge spillovers to exporting firms increase with the level of interaction in the global market place. Thus, learning‐by‐exporting is not a “short term” occurrence which takes place only in the first few years of entry in export markets after which it would fizzle out as a firm's exporting experience increases but rather, it is a cumulative process.

This paper generates a number of insights that can guide policy makers in designing policies to promote firm productivity growth that is an engine of growth in the private sector and by extension, would fuel up overall economic growth and poverty reduction.

Previous studies on exports and growth in Uganda have been basically focused on macro‐data analysis; yet, promoting rapid expansion of manufactured exports may require more than just a good macroeconomic policy environment. This study fills the research gap by relating firm‐level productivity performance to the microeconomic environment in which manufacturing firms operate.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on learning by exporting by investigating whether an increase in the complexity of exported products contributes to higher productivity at the firm level.

The study implements an empirical analysis for Estonian manufacturing firms involved in exporting for the period 2008–2014, adding product complexity as an explanatory variable in the production function estimation. An increase in product complexity is interpreted as an indirect proxy for an increase in firm capabilities, capturing both tangible and intangible elements of competitiveness and reflecting the learning effects.

A relatively weak correlation between product complexity and productivity was found using a simple OLS estimation – exporters with higher product complexity have generally higher productivity levels. Somewhat surprisingly, no evidence for the learning by exporting was found among exporters, meaning that the increased complexity does not seem to be a channel for productivity upgrading. This result seems to be robust, irrespective of estimation methods and sampling preferences.

The sample is representative of exporting firms.

The results show that the pursuit to more complex product does not necessarily contribute to productivity for exporting firms. The findings suggest that the firm-level upgrading due to increased export orientation is likely to take place through the other channels like moving up in global value chains and differentiating by product quality.

This is one of the first papers to investigate the effect of product complexity on productivity at a firm level. The results provide new insights into the learning-by-exporting hypothesis, with focus on potential learning among the existing exporters.

The paper examines the impact of export activity on productivity and how this effect is moderated by R&D investment and foreign ownership.

A time-lag effect is taken into account when examining the proposed model. Data are collected from the Annual Industrial Survey of the National Bureau of Statistics of China. A dataset containing 117,340 firms across the sample period (2001–2007) are used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that while R&D investment plays a significant role in strengthening the positive effect of export activity on a firm's productivity, foreign ownership surprisingly has a negative moderating role.

Scholarly interest in the links between export activity and productivity is on the rise. However, the bulk of research has been focused on understanding the effects of export activity on productivity at the country or industry level. Little has been done at the firm level. Another gap in the literature is that the mechanism through which the impact of export activity can be leveraged to enhance the firm's productivity has been largely ignored. To address these issues, the study adopts the learning-by-exporting theory to examine the relationship between export and productivity at the firm-level and how R&D investment and foreign ownership may explain how learning can be leveraged to enhance the firm's productivity. Finally, these relationships are examined in the context of firms from an emerging market, China, which is especially relevant for the learning-by-exporting argument used in this study.

The purpose of this study is to advance and test the idea that product exports and technology imports are complementary cross-border learning approaches for emerging market firms’ innovation performance. In addition, this paper also seeks to search for contextual variables that affect this complementarity.

This study takes systems approach to examine complementarity, combining a “productivity” and an “adoption” approach. In addition, interaction approach is also used as robustness check.

The authors show that the positive effect of export activity on firms’ growth rate is higher for firms that also engage in technology import, and vice versa. Furthermore, they show that, Ceteris paribus, firms’ adoption of one cross-border learning mechanism (e.g. entering export markets) positively influences the adoption of the other (e.g. technology import). Moreover, this complementarity is only significant for firms from province with low level of marketization.

This inconsistency about learning-by-exporting and technology import on innovation can be resolved, at least partially, by the complementarities perspective. This paper also reveals two mechanisms of learning-by-exporting: the indirect effect of export on innovation through increasing the likelihood of adoption decision of importing technology and enhancing the positive effect of technology imports.

The potential of combining the two strategies should not be ignored by managers. To improve regional competitiveness, local governments should try best to improve the efficiency of customs to help firms realize the synergistic effect of learning-by- exporting and learning-by-technology-importing.

This study first explores the positive complementarity between the two cross-border learning mechanism in sharping EEEs 2019 innovation performance and identifies the condition to realize the synergistic effect of learning-by-exporting and learning-by-technology-importing.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nexus between export participation and productivity performance of transport manufacturing firms in India, for the period 1994‐2006.

The relative performance of exporting vis‐à‐vis non‐exporting firms in the industry is examined by utilizing a semi‐parametric test based on the principle of first order stochastic dominance. Subsequently, the causal relation between export and productivity is tested by mainly focusing on learning‐by‐exporting and self‐selection hypotheses.

The authors' results suggest that productivity performance of firms does not directly affect the probability of exporting. However, the results do provide some evidence which indicates that good firms self‐select into the export market. Furthermore, it was also found that sunk costs of exporting are the key determinants of probability of exporting in the industry. Finally, the authors tested the effect of exporting on productivity and found that past exporting experience or history has a significant and positive impact on firms' productivity.

In the light of the findings of this study, it can be suggested that the trade policy in India should focus on encouraging firms to increase export participation. At the same time, the authors' evidence also advocates that the economic policies should also aim on technology enhancement (i.e. more incentive for R&D activities and training) of firms, to help them achieve higher levels of productivity and efficiency, which in turn will increase the probability of their survival in the highly‐competitive international export market.

The paper provides new evidence on the export‐productivity nexus from the Indian manufacturing industry by testing the empirical validity of the learning‐by‐exporting and self‐selection hypotheses, along with the role of sunk costs in export decisions of firms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direction of causality between firm productivity and export status. The correlation can arise from multiple alternative causal models, and the authors study if more productive firms export, and/or if firms learn to export, and/or if firms learn by exporting.

The authors investigate these relationships, harnessing the natural experiments offered by firms which transitioned into exporting, in a dataset of Indian firms from 1989 to 2015. Each firm which made the transition is matched against a control which did not. The transitions take place across many years, thus permitting a matched event study in firm outcomes.

The authors find there is self-selection of more productive firms into exporting. Firms that make the transition into exporting become bigger, but there is little evidence of learning by exporting, of improvements in productivity right after exporting commences. However, there is evidence of learning to export, that is there is improvement in productivity of export starters in comparison to their productivity a couple of years before they begin to export.

The strength of the paper lies in an opportunity for sound measurement: we observe firms make a transition from domestic market into exporting. The transitions take place across many years, thus permitting a matched event study in firm outcomes. Using this methodology, the authors find that firms become more productive a few years before they export, that is they learn to export. They contribute to the literature by bringing evidence of “learning to export” from a developing country.

The purpose of this study is to examine how family governance and technological capabilities influence the conversion of new knowledge obtained from exports into various innovation outputs, a phenomenon called “learning-by-exporting (LBE).”

To properly examine the causal links proposed in the study, first, the control for endogeneity. Second, a propensity-score matching longitudinal analysis is conducted, a particularly robust empirical method that enhances reliability in non-experimental data, over an average sample of 663 manufacturing companies for the period 2007 to 2014.

Family firms’ innovation strategies and abilities render them more likely to convert the new knowledge from exporting into product innovation and more efficient in this endeavor than non-family firms. This diverts family firms’ typically limited resources from process innovation, and they have a smaller LBE effect than non-family firms in terms of process innovation.

The study contributes to the internationalization literature by producing a more nuanced view of the learning-by-exporting effect which considers the type of innovation outcomes developed following export activity. It also helps to identify some of the firm-specific factors that shape the relationship between exports and innovation, by empirically examining for the first time the role of family governance in innovation capabilities and decisions.

Does the long-term growth rate of a firm increase by exporting? If yes, how large is that increase in a developing economy? The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The authors incorporate data from the manufacturing plants in Iran as a developing economy for 2003–2011 to address this question. Using fixed effect panel and propensity score matching method, the authors examine whether exportation can affect a firm’s growth rate to test for the learning to grow hypothesis.

The findings document that: not only the exporters are larger and more productive than non-exporters, but they also grow faster in size and productivity measures as well. Additionally, the authors find that the rise in the growth rate is a short-term phenomenon and it disappears in the second year; meaning that exportation does not have a permanent growth effect. The findings are consistent with a spot effect of learning, compared to a permanent growth engine. Results are robust to different analysis tests.

The authors investigate the learning effect of exporting within recently released firm-level data of a developing country.