Information Cost As A Prior Hurdle to Exporting

In this paper, we empirically assess how information cost, as one component of trade costs, impacts the decision of an individual firm to export. Firm-level data measuring the difficulty of obtaining information about technical regulations in the European Union (EU) and the United States is used as a proxy for information cost to evaluate reduction in firm incentives to export. Results suggest that information cost significantly reduces the likelihood of exporting to these two destinations. Negative impacts are relatively larger for a firm exporting to the United States than to the EU.