Productive performance based on R&D activities of low-tech firms: an antecedent of the decision to export?

We argue that technical efficiency, when R&D stock is considered as a crucial resource, reflects the effectiveness of the underlying firm governance mechanism which transforms competencies into capabilities. We argue that for the case of low-tech R&D active firms (i) their R&D-based productive performance and their decision to export are endogenously related 'due to self-selection', (ii) the examined low-tech R&D active firms are dichotomized in two regimes, exporters and non-exporters, and (iii) the role of innovation patterns is a premise in determining low-tech firms' R&D-based productive performance and export decision-making. We provide empirical evidence on the above hypotheses exploiting information from a unique data set regarding Greek low-tech R&D active manufacturing firms and adopting bootstrap data envelopment analysis techniques as well as an appropriate endogenous switching regressions, of the Mover-Stayer type, econometric model.