Do Non‐exporting Plants Benefit from Exporting Peer Plants?*

• Author: Hyunbae Chun,Jung Hur,Haeyeon Yoon,Nyeong Seon Son
• Date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/asej.12184
• Published date: 01 September 2019

Do Non-exporting Plants Benefit from Exporting

Peer Plants?*

Hyunbae Chun, Jung Hur, Nyeong Seon Son and

Haeyeon Yoon

This study examines indirect spillover effects at plant levelwithin firms by analyz-

ing the performance of non-exporting plants with exporting peer plants by using

Korean plant–firm matched data from 2007 to 2013. Our results show that there

are no significant differences in growth between non-exporting plants and their

exporting peer plants in the same firms, whereas significant differences exist

among non-exporting plants depending on whether their peers export. This

implies that exporting peer plants are important channels through which non-

exporting plants benefit within a firm.

Keywords: difference in difference, non-exporting plant, propensity, score

matching, spillover effects.

JEL classification codes: F14, L23.

doi: 10.1111/asej.12184

I. Introduction

Firms obtain knowledge and technology from export activity and they grow

faster than non-export firms (e.g. see Arrow, 1962; Blalock and Gertler, 2004).

The learning by exporting hypothesis is supported by studies using micro data

(De Loecker, 2007; Fernandes and Isgut, 2015) although debate about causality

remains (Aw et al., 2000; Bernard and Wagner, 2001).

At the same time, with the growth of globalization and the prevalence of

multi-plant multinational firms, within-firm activities have been highlighted in

*Chun: Department of Economics, Sogang University, 35 Baekeom-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul 04107,

Korea. Email: hchun@sogang.ac.kr. Jung Hur (corresponding author): Department of Economics,

Sogang University, 35 Baekeom-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul 04107, Korea. Email: ecsjhur@sogang.ac.kr.

Son: Department of ICT Statistics Research, Korea Information Society Development Institute,

18, Jeongtong-ro, Deoksan-myeon, Jincheon-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do 27872, Korea. Email:

nsson@kisdi.re.kr. Yoon (first author): School of Economics, Singapore Management University,

90 Stamford Road, Singapore 178903, Singapore. Email: hyyoon@smu.edu.sg.

We thank Teresa Fort, Tomohiko Inui and other participants at the 2017 Comparative Analysis

of Enterprise Data and the 2017 Hitotsubashi-Sogang Trade Workshop for their helpful comments.

We thank Statistics Korea and the Korea Statistics Promotion Institute for allowing us to access the

plant-level database in a secured data center. All the results have been reviewed to ensure that no

confidential information is disclosed.

© 2019 East Asian Economic Association and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

Asian Economic Journal 2019, Vol.33 No.3, 221–234 221