Productivity and trade: the importance of learning in Brazilian foreign trade

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the productivity gains generated by the learning process of Brazilian firms in international trade. Using the Abadie-Imbens estimator, we evaluated productivity differences between exporting and non-exporting firms at different moments in time, controlling for the selection process. The results show evidence favorable to the learning effect: exporting companies become on average 20.7% more productive when compared to non-exporting firms based on the concept of total factor productivity and 26.3% more productive based on the concept of labor productivity. We also observed that the productivity gains depended on the spatial distribution of firms, industrial sector and specific characteristics of industries. The results are in line with international evidence on the subject.