Firm-level interactions between exporting and productivity: Industry-specific evidence

This paper investigates interactions between exporting and productivity at the firm level, using a panel of firms in the UK chemical industry. This is both highly technology intensive and the UK's largest exporting sector. We find exporters are more productive than non-exporters, but are also on average smaller. This superior productivity performance among exporters appears to be caused by both self-selection and learning-by-exporting effects. In contrast to other studies, we find learning effects are significantly positive among new entrants, weaker for more experienced exporters and negative for established exporters.