Financial development and survival of African agri-food exports

This paper investigates the link between export survival of agri-food products and financial development. Our hypothesis is that financial developement differentially affects the survival of exports across products based on their need of external finance. We propose a test for the role of financial development by examining whether exports of products that are relatively more reliant on external capital survive longer when initiated in more financially developped countries. Our results suggest that agri-food products that require more external finance indeed sustain longer in foreign markets when exported from more financially developed countries.