Exporting abroad is much harder than selling at home, and overcoming hurdles to exporting takes time. Our goal is to identify specific barriers to exporting and to measure their importance. We develop a model of firm-level export dynamics that features costly customer search, network effects in...

Using transactions-level customs data from Colombia, we study firm-specific export patterns over the period 1996-2005. Our data allow us to track firms' entry and exit into and out of individual destination markets, as well as their revenues from selling there. We find that, in a typical year,...

Using transactions-level customs data from Colombia, we study firm-specific export patterns over the period 1996-2005. Our data allow us to track firms' entry and exit into and out of individual destination markets, as well as their revenues from selling there. We find that, in a typical year,...