Performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises in services trade: evidence from French firms

Iza Lejárraga () and Harald Oberhofer

Small Business Economics, 2015, vol. 45, issue 3, 673-702

Abstract: This paper empirically investigates the key firm- and industry-specific restrictions to the performance of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in services trade. For this purpose, we use firm-level data from firms in France operating in different services sectors over the time period 1998–2007 and formulate two-part models consisting of (1) (dynamic) export equations and (2) (dynamic) export share equations. Our results confirm the view that a relatively low share of SMEs engages in services trade. In line with the new-new trade theory, our results also corroborate that more productive SMEs have a higher export probability. The key finding of this paper is that the export decisions of SMEs in services sectors are estimated to be extremely persistent, implying that trade policy efforts, including the allocation of scarce trade promotion budgets, should be directed at addressing the barriers faced in establishing the first export operation. Finally, our sub-sectoral estimates reveal considerable heterogeneity across different types of services. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Keywords: Internationalization; Services trade; Small- and medium-sized enterprises; Export activities; Dynamic export questions; C23; C25; F14; F23; L26; L80; L90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11187-015-9647-z (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:sbusec:v:45:y:2015:i:3:p:673-702

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/11187/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11187-015-9647-z

Access Statistics for this article

Small Business Economics is currently edited by Zoltan J. Acs and David B. Audretsch

More articles in Small Business Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().