Lifting the Domestic Veil: The Challenges of Exporting Differentiated Goods Across the Development Divide

Alejandro Artopoulos, Daniel Friel and Juan Hallak

No 16947, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Several developing countries feature weak performances as exporters of differentiated goods to developed countries. This paper builds a conceptual framework to explain the obstacles that prevent producers of differentiated products from establishing a consistent presence in the developed world and the process through which those obstacles may be overcome. We build our framework based on case studies of export emergence in four Argentine industries: motorboats, television programs, wines, and wooden furniture. We find that exporting consistently to developed countries requires drastic changes in how business is conceived and conducted relative to the practices that prevail among domestically-oriented firms. Attempts by these firms to export often do not succeed because they approach foreign markets the same way that they approach the domestic one. Their failure to change the business approach stems from their inability to access critical (tacit) knowledge about differences in consumption patterns and business practices in developed countries. In three of the sectors we study, an export pioneer is the first to implement the necessary changes to established practices. His actions set a benchmark, unleashing a diffusion process that fosters export emergence in the sector. The most salient feature of export pioneers is their knowledge advantage about foreign markets stemming from their embeddedness in the business community of their industry in a developed country.

JEL-codes: F10 F14 M13 M16 O14 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-04
Note: ITI
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16947.pdf (application/pdf)

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:nbr:nberwo:16947

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16947

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().