Milan Čupić and Stefan Vržina
Despite exports having been the subject of academic attention for decades, associating exports with firm performance is unclear. Previous studies have produced two opposite theories. The learning-by-exporting hypothesis states that exports improve firm performance due to knowledge transfers from foreign markets to exporters, on the one hand, whereas on the other, those advocating the self-selection hypothesis argue that firms with better financial performance are more likely to export. This paper aims to examine the relationship between exports and the performance of firms in Serbia. The results of this research study show that exports are statistically significantly associated with productivity, this finding being robust to changes in the productivity measure and the sample size. Associating exports with firm profitability, however, is sensitive to changes in profitability measures. In addition, the research results are more typical of the manufacturing sector. Several reasons for the poor performance of Serbian exports and several recommendations with respect to that are offered in this paper.
Vlatka Bilas and Sanja Franc
This paper is aimed at examining the fact whether foreign direct investment (FDI) and exports do contribute to economic growth in the thirteen European Union (EU) new member states (namely Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) during the period from 2005 to 2020 or not. Various statistical tests were performed in order to examine the relationship and causality among the three observed series, including unit-root tests, the Kao and Pedroni cointegration tests, and finally the modified causality test. The obtained results are mixed. Although cointegration was established between FDI, exports and growth, the estimation of the long-term coefficients varied to such an extent that only ambiguous conclusions about the effect of FDI and exports on the growth of the real gross domestic product (GDP) could be reached. The research results imply the fact that positive effects of FDI and exports are neither automatic nor equal in all the countries, but the same rather depend on the many factors and conditions that the governments of the selected states should consider when designing policy measures for attracting FDI and promoting exports.