There is extensive empirical evidence pointing to the exsistence of sunk costs to exporting. Only higher productivity firms can profitably cover these and enter export markets. This is the standard explanation for the regularity with which econometric analyses reports that exporters are more...

The impact of firm level productivity heterogeneity on export market entry has been the subject of theoretical innovation and extensive empirical scrutiny in recent years. The latter has focused on falling trade costs and firm level productivity, notwithstanding the fact that theory also points...