Assessing the Impact of Marketing Assistance on the Export Performance of Northern Ireland SMEs

This paper examines the extent to which marketing assistance administered to a group of high performing Northern Ireland SMEs led to improved export revenue growth. Standard OLS models provided no evidence to support the view that marketing grants substantially improved the export performance of assisted firms; however, substantial impacts were detected when treatment models were estimated, indicating that selection into marketing assistance tended to be a non-random event. Marketing assistance was found to be a highly effective policy tool when targeted towards SMEs already active in export markets and/or involved in product innovation. From a methodological standpoint the analysis highlights the potential benefits of using other grant information within the treatment model as a means of uncovering additional important information on firm level characteristics that might otherwise have been missed.