Export Barriers: What Are They and Who Do They Matter To?

The recent literature on firm exporting behaviour has established that both sunk-cost of exports and firm characteristics, such as size and productivity matter. In this paper we provide fresh evidence on the actual barriers to exporting firms face and how they vary with export experience and other firm-level characteristics. Our results indicate that the higher the export experience of firms the lower are trade costs. These barriers are not related to other firms-level characteristics such as, productivity and size, found by the literature to be associated with export market entry. Overall, these results suggest the existence of a process of learning to export whereby firms learn how to cope with export barriers through direct experience in export markets.