Exporting and productivity growth: Evidence from the Taiwan electronics plants

This paper uses propensity score matching techniques and ordinary least square regressions to examine the relationship between exporting and productivity growth in the Taiwan electronics industry. Using data from three census years, we find that plants with higher productivity growth tend to enter the export market, supporting the self-selection mechanism. The evidence of learning-by-exporting is mixed, however. While the plants exporting throughout the sample period show small differences in productivity growth from non-exporters in the downturn period, continuing exporters outperform non-exporters in the upturn period. Thus, our results suggest that the direction of causality mainly runs from productivity to exporting rather than vice versa.