Policy Briefing

Export status and SME productivity: learning-to-export versus learning-by-exporting.

ERC Policy Briefing

Associated Themes
  • Internationalisation
  • Productivity and performance

Exporting offers firms the opportunity both to maximise profits from their existing products and services and, through ‘learning-by-exporting’, to identify new innovation opportunities. In this paper, we exploit a unique data source to examine the strategic choices of smaller firms in terms of exporting or non-exporting. We pay particular attention to a substantial group of export-capable firms which state that they have products or services suitable for exporting but have no intention to export.

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