James Tybout

TL;DR: In this paper, the causal links between exporting and productivity using plant-level data were analyzed. And the authors concluded that relatively efficient erms become exporters; however, in most industries, erms' costs are not affected by previous exporting activities.

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors quantified the effect of prior exporting experience on the decisions of Colombian manufacturing plants to participate in foreign markets and developed a dynamic discrete-choice model of exporting behavior that separates the roles of profit heterogeneity and sunk entry costs in explaining plants' exporting status.

TL;DR: The authors analyzed the causal links between exporting and productivity using firm-level panel data from three semi-industrialized countries and found that relatively efficient firms become exporters, but firms' unit costs are not affected by previous export market participation, while the well-known efficiency gap between exporters and non-exporters is due to self-selection of the more efficient firms into the export market, rather than learning by exporting.

TL;DR: Tybout et al. as mentioned in this paper found that protection increases firms' price-cost margins and reduces average efficiency levels at the margin, which suggests that the general trend toward trade liberalization has yielded greater benefits than the traditional gains from specialization.

TL;DR: The authors assess these conjectures and find none to be systematically supported, and conclude that small firms are unable or unwilling to grow, so important scale economies go unexploited in developing countries.