Learning by Export: Does the presence of foreign affiliate companies matter?

本稿は、輸出の開始が本邦企業のパフォーマンスへ与える影響について、輸出企業の海外関係会社（親会社の海外支店および自社の海外子会社）の有無に着目して分析したものである。企業の輸出ステータスと関係会社の海外進出状況を含むユニークなデータを用いたpropensity-score matching difference-in-difference推定の結果から、第1に、輸出企業が非輸出企業に比べて輸出前の時点で高い企業パフォーマンスを示しているのみならず、そのパフォーマンスの格差が輸出開始後に拡大することが分かった。第2に、こうした輸出開始後のパフォーマンスの改善は、輸出企業の海外関係会社が存在しない場合においてよりクリアに確認されたが、海外関係会社が存在している場合には、パフォーマンスの改善度合いが大きくばらついていることが分かった。これらの結果は、輸出市場へ企業自身がアクセスすることによって学習効果を享受するというメカニズムの予想と整合的なものである。

This paper investigates the effect of export activities on firm performance by taking into account whether or not exporter firms' affiliated companies (i.e., their own subsidiaries and parent companies' branches) are located in the export markets. To single out a causal impact on firm performance running from starting export, we employ propensity-score matching difference-in-differences estimation. Using a unique firm-level panel dataset that allows us to identify firms starting export and firms staying in domestic markets as well as their affiliated firms' overseas activities, we find that firms exhibited better performance than their non-exporter counterparts prior to export, and that the difference in the performance, especially productivity, significantly widened after export. Such improvement in productivity originated from starting export was found to be statistically and economically significant when exporter firms did not have affiliated firms in overseas markets. On the other hand, the performance gain from export was highly heterogeneous and hence statistically insignificant in the case when these affiliated firms were present in overseas market. The former type of firm fits well to test the learning-by-exporting mechanism hypothesis since it accessed the export markets for the first time by exporting.