Causal Link Between Exporting And Innovation Activity. Evidence From Slovenian Firms

In this paper the authors investigate the causal relationship between firms' innovation and exporting activity by using detailed firm-level data on innovation activity, financial variables and information on trade for Slovenian firms in 1996-2002. They employ the vicariate probity regression on a system of innovation and exporting equations as well as matching procedures to tease out the direction of causality between exporting status and innovation activity. These results suggest a strong positive relationship between exporting and innovation activity in both directions, while results on the impacts of lagged export (or innovation) status on the probability to start innovating (or exporting) are less conclusive.