Tag Archives: export performance

FEMISE MED BRIEF no9 : “The determinants of export performance of firms in MENA countries”

The FEMISE Policy Brief series MED BRIEF aspires to provide Forward Thinking for the EuroMediterranean region. The briefs contain succinct, policy-oriented analysis of relevant EuroMed issues, presenting the views of FEMISE researchers and collaborators to policy-makers.

The ninth issue of MED BRIEF “The determinants of export performance of firms in selected MENA countries. Comparison to CEE countries, Israel and Turkey” is available by clicking here.

Pr. Alfred Tovias (Leonard Davis Institute of International Relations, The Hebrew University and FEMISE)

While focussing mainly on the export performance determinants of firms in selected MENA countries, this brief draws some useful policy recommendations after comparing the MENA firms performance with that of firms from countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Empirical results obtained for Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and CEE countries indicate that productivity, firm size, spending on research and development (R&D), the share of university graduates in productive employment and the internationalization of firms all have a positive relation vis-a-vis the probability of exporting.

The list of FEMISE MED BRIEFS is available here.

The policy brief has been produced with the financial assistance of the European Union within the context of the FEMISE program. The contents of this document are the sole responsibility of the authors and can under no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.

The determinants of export performance of firms in selected MENA countries

In this paper we study the determinants of export performance of firms in selected MENA countries jointly and separately and compare them to the performance of firms from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

The analysis is based on information on individual firms contained in the BEEPS V data base, and covers the period of 2011-2014. We estimate the probability of exports controlling for country and sector specific effects using the probit model. We find that in both groups of countries similar variables affect firm export performance.

Our empirical results obtained for the MENA and CEE countries indicate that theprobability of exporting is positively related to thelevel of productivity, firm size, spending on research and development, the share of university graduates in productive employment and the internationalization of firms. State ownership and the perception of corruption by firms are mostly not statistically significant.

The results obtained for the two groups of countries are statistically not very different, but enough to have some policy implications while results for particular countries and sub-groups of countries reveal a large degree of heterogeneity.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 1 we survey the relevant literature on the determinants of export performance. In Section 2 we describe the research methodology and the dataset. In Section 3 we report our empirical results. Finally, the last section summarizes and concludes with policy guidelines and directions for future research.