Explaining cross-country differences in exporting performance: The role of country-level macroeconomic environment

•Identifying factors to explain the mixed post-entry performance from exporting remain unclear.•A meta-analysis is undertaken to explain the differences in learning effect using both country-level and firm-level factors.•Higher external demand and favourable price competitiveness increase exporting performance.•Higher returns from overseas production reduce the learning-by-exporting effect.•The learning effect from exporting is lower in periods of financial crisis.

In this paper, we undertake a meta-analysis to investigate whether country-level macroeconomic factors can help explain the inconclusiveness of existing evidence on the firm-level productivity–exporting relationship – the so-called learning-by-exporting hypothesis. Using 34 studies that investigate learning by exporting covering 31 countries, we attempt to explain whether country-specific macroeconomic factors account for the variation in the estimated firm-specific productivity effects from exporting across different studies, along with considering a firm-level factor. Robust to different specifications, one interesting finding is that countries with bigger external demand (measured by distance-weighted global GDP for each country) are likely to display a higher estimate of the productivity effect of exporting. In addition, countries with higher competitiveness, as reflected in lower relative prices, tend to experience higher exporting performance, while higher returns from overseas production reduce the learning effect from exporting at the firm level. The results also indicate that the effect of exporting on firm productivity is lower in periods of financial crisis.