a deeper understanding of the demand for their product and are thus better at placing it in willing markets in a sustainable fashion.

**Table 7:** Surviving past the first year (probit – marginal effects)

||**(1)**|**(2)**|**(3)**|**(4)**|**(5)**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Attractiveness**|**0.132**|**0.0721**|**0.0661**|**0.0136**|**0.0458**|
|**Agglomeration**|**0.236*****|**0.177*****|**0.201*****|**0.192*****|**0.176*****|
|**Exp. w. product**|**0.868*****|**0.811*****|**0.824*****|**0.820*****|**0.903*****|
|**Exp. w. destination**|**0.198*****|**0.224*****|**0.223*****|**0.359*****|**0.451*****|
|**Initial $ value**||**0.176*****|**0.176*****|**0.162*****|**0.159*****|
|**Has RCA**|||**-0.264*****|**-0.256****|**-0.251****|
|**Firm div. (products)**||||**-0.173****|**0.0777**|
|**Firm div. (destinations)**||||**-0.114**|**0.0574**|
|**Firm div. (P-D)**|||||**-0.477*****|
|**Firm div. (sectors)**|||||**-0.0381**|
|**N**|**3404**|**3404**|**3402**|**1771**|**1771**|
||*** p<0.10**|**** p<0.05**|***** p<0.01**|||

_Source:_ Authors‟ calculation based on Lao PDR customs data We find similar results for the initial value baseline regression, with all but the attractiveness coefficients significant at the 1 percent level. Experience with a destination is negative this time, indicating that firms which export many products to a destination are more cautious in adding another to the roster and therefore start off at lower values. Experience with the product has a large and positive marginal effect, underlining the confidence effect that is also evident in the survival regression. Agglomeration also comes out with a large and positive coefficient, showing that synergy and discovery-cost sharing emboldens exporters to start large rather than the intensity of competition making them timid.

The coefficients found in specification (1) change very little when the other regressors are included in subsequent models. Model (2) in the survival analysis further includes the initial dollar value as an independent variable. Its coefficient, positive and very significant, reproduces a stylized fact from the literature: confident exporters who start off at higher values also stand a better chance of surviving. This positive correlation is also quite robust to the addition of additional regressors.

Including the RCA of products is positive but not significant for initial values (Table 8). The RCA variable appears to show a strange interaction with the attractiveness coefficient, which becomes highly significant. It loses significance again and reverses sign when the regressors related to lack of focus are included. On the survival side (Table 7), the inclusion of RCA changes little of the baseline coefficients. This is reassuring because there could be an overlap between RCA and our agglomeration measure, but this is not observed.

As mentioned earlier, one would expect that the experience of exporters in comparative advantage and disadvantage sectors should be very different with respect to survival beyond the first year, and one intuitively expects firms exporting products with an RCA to be able to survive longer. This is not the case, as can be seen in Table 7, where the coefficient of the RCA dummy _Exporting from a small landlocked economy_ _20_