Export Activity in Visegrad 4 Countries: Firm Level Investigation

Following the new strand in the new trade theory literature that focuses on firm heterogeneity initiated by the Melitz [2003] model, in this paper we investigate the determinants of export activity of firms in the Visegrad-4 countries. The study covers the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia and is based on firm level data for the 2002–2009 period.We will start with estimating probit regressions for the pooled dataset that includes all V-4 countries and will then disaggregate the sample into particular countries. Our preliminary estimation results obtained for the whole V-4 sample indicate that the probability of exporting increases with the higher share of university graduates in productive employment, larger spending on R&D projects, the use of foreign technology licenses, foreign ownership, higher productivity and company size. The results obtained for particular V-4 countries reveal some degree of heterogeneity among those countries.