TESTING SELF-SELECTION AND LEARNING BY EXPORTING HYPOTHESES. THE CASE OF ROMANIA

This paper provides empirical evidence of export productivity link, using a comprehensive set of data on Romanian firms activating in ten business sectors. By using the semi-parametric estimation technique developed by Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) to estimate Total Factor Productivity (TFP)we find that exporters display a productivity advantage compared to their domestic counterparts. We seek to distinguish between self-selection and learning by exporting through matching techniques and we find that the most productive firms self-select in activities in international markets, including importing. Learning effects (when TFP is used as outcome) are present on a narrow sample of companies, although in most of the cases are positive and significant when using labour productivity. Stronger evidence for positive effects of international trade is found for importers, which suggests a possible learning by importing phenomenon manifested in Romanian.