Intermittent exporting: unusual business or business as usual?

We construct an empirically supported definition of incidental and perennial exporting and investigate to what extent incidental exporting is a steady-state of firms, to what extent incidental exporters are distinguishable from non-exporters and perennial exporters and which factors explain the switching of export status. Our findings point at a Melitz (Econometrica 71(6): 1695–1725, 2003) type productivity sorting pattern, where perennial exporters are more productive than incidental exporters which are in turn more productive than non-exporters. However, incidental exporting seems to be a temporary state for the large majority of firms on their way to either becoming a perennial exporter or exiting foreign markets altogether. For only a relatively small group of firms, the intermittent exporters, incidental exporting—typically shipping one product to one country every few years—seems to be business as usual. Labor productivity shows to be a key factor in the process of moving from incidental exporting to perennial exporting. Particularly expanding the export portfolio along the extensive margin adds to the robustness of the firm’s export status, even though growth along the intensive margin also cements a firm’s position on foreign markets.