Export activity, R&D investment, and foreign ownership: does it matter for productivity?

PurposeThe paper examines the impact of export activity on productivity and how this effect is moderated by R&D investment and foreign ownership.Design/methodology/approachA time-lag effect is taken into account when examining the proposed model. Data are collected from the Annual Industrial Survey of the National Bureau of Statistics of China. A dataset containing 117,340 firms across the sample period (2001–2007) are used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate that while R&D investment plays a significant role in strengthening the positive effect of export activity on a firm's productivity, foreign ownership surprisingly has a negative moderating role.Originality/valueScholarly interest in the links between export activity and productivity is on the rise. However, the bulk of research has been focused on understanding the effects of export activity on productivity at the country or industry level. Little has been done at the firm level. Another gap in the literature is that the mechanism through which the impact of export activity can be leveraged to enhance the firm's productivity has been largely ignored. To address these issues, the study adopts the learning-by-exporting theory to examine the relationship between export and productivity at the firm-level and how R&D investment and foreign ownership may explain how learning can be leveraged to enhance the firm's productivity. Finally, these relationships are examined in the context of firms from an emerging market, China, which is especially relevant for the learning-by-exporting argument used in this study.

Knowledge and Export Modes: Which Export Strategy Boosts Firms Knowledge Acquisition?

The aim of our research is to investigate whether the choice to export directly versus indirect export plays a role in the level of knowledge acquired by exporting firms. To the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical evidence in this stream of literature and our original contribution consists in considering the outcomes of learning-by-exporting in presence of export intermediaries. Thus, we study whether different export strategies may generate different unobservable productivity premia. In particular, we focused on 25 emerging Countries, and through a machine learning method, we evaluate how the level of knowledge acquired by firms would change if those who chose a specific strategy had instead chosen another one. Our results show that (1) the learning by exporting hypothesis is still valid when firms export indirectly; (2) direct exporters acquire more knowledge than indirect exporters; (3) under the same export strategy, Chinese exporters (direct and indirect) outperform other Asian exporters.

Family firms’ selective learning-by-exporting: product vs process innovation and the role of technological capabilities

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how family governance and technological capabilities influence the conversion of new knowledge obtained from exports into various innovation outputs, a phenomenon called “learning-by-exporting (LBE).” Design/methodology/approach To properly examine the causal links proposed in the study, first, the control for endogeneity. Second, a propensity-score matching longitudinal analysis is conducted, a particularly robust empirical method that enhances reliability in non-experimental data, over an average sample of 663 manufacturing companies for the period 2007 to 2014. Findings Family firms’ innovation strategies and abilities render them more likely to convert the new knowledge from exporting into product innovation and more efficient in this endeavor than non-family firms. This diverts family firms’ typically limited resources from process innovation, and they have a smaller LBE effect than non-family firms in terms of process innovation. Originality/value The study contributes to the internationalization literature by producing a more nuanced view of the learning-by-exporting effect which considers the type of innovation outcomes developed following export activity. It also helps to identify some of the firm-specific factors that shape the relationship between exports and innovation, by empirically examining for the first time the role of family governance in innovation capabilities and decisions.