Do Export Promotion Agencies Promote New Exporters?
Do export promotion agencies impact the probability of non-exporting firms to export? In the last decade many countries have introduced export promotion agencies to support their firms to deal with asymmetric information problems and make feasible...
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| Format: | Policy Research Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank Group, Washington, DC
2014
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2014/08/20119993/export-promotion-agencies-promote-new-exporters http://hdl.handle.net/10986/20362 |
| Summary: | Do export promotion agencies impact the
probability of non-exporting firms to export? In the last
decade many countries have introduced export promotion
agencies to support their firms to deal with asymmetric
information problems and make feasible additional gains from
trade. Some recent studies have found that the support of
these agencies has been effective with respect to the
intensive and extensive margins of trade. Nevertheless,
because of the lack of information on non-exporting firms,
few of them analyze their impact on the probability of
promoting new exporters. This paper evaluates the impact of
the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency
(Apex-Brasil) on firms' export status using a unique
firm-level dataset that covers the full manufacturing sector
in Brazil. To identify the impact of Apex's assistance
on firms' export propensity, the paper relies on a
procedure of matching difference-in-difference estimators.
The empirical results show evidence of the program's
positive impact on the probability of promoting new
exporters. The effect is heterogeneous according to
firms' size categories and sectors. Furthermore, the
findings suggest that the program has spillover effects.
Although the evidence of positive effect is robust, the low
propensity to export for both the treated and the control
groups reinforces the importance of other firms'
determinants (for example, productivity), which is widely
emphasized by the trade literature. |
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