R&D Activities and Export Performance of Indian Private Firms

This paper formulates a model of optimal export decision of private firms and then empirically studies the effect of firm size, R&D activities and competitiveness on export performance of Indian private firms during the period 1975-1986. The paper argues that the Cragg model is more appropriate to model firms’ export behavior than the commonly used Tobit model. The evaluation of the export promotion and partial import liberalization policies of 1980 based on the Tobit model is found to be qualitatively quite different from the evaluation based on the Cragg model. The LR and LM specification tests reject the Tobit model against the Cragg model in all specifications.