R&D and Export Decision: Evidence from Turkey

Abstract

This study analyzes the relationship between export and R&D expenditure using Probit and Tobit models for Turkish manufacturing industry. Besides testing the suggested relationships discussed in literature, we particularly focus on examination of the relationship between export and labor productivity, i.e. presence of self selection and learning by exporting effects for Turkish firms. To this end, we employ a regression setting estimated by seemingly unrelated regression (SURE) technique.   The findings show that convincing signs of self selection effect are present in Turkey, while there is no evidence on the presence of learning by exporting effect.

Keywords: Research and Development, Export, Learning-by-Exporting, Self- Selection, Turkey.