Does Learning by Exporting Happen? Evidence from the Automobile Industry in China

The concept that exporters learn from their exporting experience is a theoretical result that needs to be tested empirically. However, the literature provides mixed evidence. In this paper, to estimate productivity, an approach suggested by De Loecker is applied, which corrects for econometric and consistency problems. Using a dataset for the Chinese automobile between 1998 and 2007, no evidence of learning by exporting was found. The data also suggests explanations for why it does not support this hypothesis.