Persistent Exporter Performance: The importance of internal, local and global knowledge

In this paper we investigate how various innovation strategies, local knowledge sources and global knowledge pipe-lines influence the likelihood that a firm will be a persistent exporter and the productivity growth of such persistently exporting firms. Using a bivariate logit model and a dynamic GMM panel data estimator on Swedish manufacturing firms observed over 12 years, we find that the propensity to be a persistent exporter is strongly related to both highly frequent and more temporary innovativeness and the global openness of the regional industry in the firm’s own line of activity. The growth rate in total factor productivity of persistent exporters, however, increases with intensity of invention activities, accessibility to local business services and the openness of the same regional industry in which the firm operates.