History Matters for the Export Decision: Plant-Level Evidence from Turkish Manufacturing Industry

We analyze the export decision of Turkish manufacturing plants from 1990 to 2001. In addition to the presence of high Sunk costs of entry in export market,,, we find support for the hypothesis that the full history of exporting matters for the current export decision. However, the effect of the past export experience on current export decision depreciates rapidly with time: recent export market participation matters more than the participation further in the past. Finally, while persistence in exporting helps lower the costs of re-entry today, there are diminishing returns to export experience. The results are robust to several plant characteristics (plant size, technology, composition of the employment), and the spillovers from the presence of exporters in the same industry. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd, All rights reserved

Foreign ownership, competition, and survival dynamics

The impact of foreign direct investment on host countries' industrial sectors has received considerable attention. It is shown by many researchers that foreign plants are more productive than are domestic ones, but the empirical evidence regarding spillovers is not unambiguous. In this paper, we suggest that the impact of foreign direct investment on local industry hinges on the dynamics of foreign and domestic plants-i.e., on entry and selection (exit) processes. Our analysis of foreign investment and competition dynamics in Turkish manufacturing industry for the period 1983-2001 indicates that foreign plants have a better performance level than do domestic ones when they are first established in the local market, and, subsequently, are more likely to survive but; the difference in survival probabilities disappears when the industry and/or plant characteristics are controlled for. Moreover, foreign presence seems to have no long-term effect on the survival prospects of domestic plants