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 titan non-exporters, but are also on average smaller. This superior productivity performance among exporters appears to be caused by both sell-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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]