Financial development, exporting and firm heterogeneity in Chile

Using plant-level data from the manufacturing sector of Chile for the period 1990–2000, this paper examines the effect of financial development on the probability of exporting at the plant level, with a special focus on the heterogeneous responses of plants with different characteristics. The main results are that an improvement in financial development increases the probability of exporting of more productive plants and those with foreign ownership operating in manufacturing sectors that are more dependent on external finance. Our estimates also show that financial development does not appear to improve the probability of exporting for relatively smaller and younger plants. This result suggests that, at least for the case of exporting in Chile, smaller and younger plants are not necessarily more likely to benefit than larger and older plants from improvements in access to credit.