Title: A note on detecting learning by exporting
Description: "Learning by exporting refers to the mechanism whereby firms improve their performance (productivity) after entering export markets.  Although this mechanism is often mentioned in policy documents, a significant share of econometric studies has not found evidence for this hypothesis.  This paper shows that the methods used to come to the latter conclusion suffer from a large internal inconsistency: they rely on an exogenous evolving productivity process.  I show how recent proxy estimators can accommodate endogenous productivity processes such as learning by exporting.  I rely on my framework to discuss the bias introduced by ignoring such a process and how adjusting for it can lead to detect significant productivity gains upon export entry.  I estimate my model on standard firm-level data and find substantial additional productivity gains from entering export markets"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.