Finally, productivity improves less in export oriented firms in Chad. This finding is
explained by the performance of one exporter (the only Chad exporter in our sample in 1993),
which was rather poor in terms of productivity growth and quite extraordinary in terms of export
growth. Even in Gabon, however, the export dummy is not statistically significant. Broadly
speaking, we can infer that profit opportunities have induced export-oriented firms to increase
output but with no visible productivity impact.
In conclusion, devaluation appears to have favored exporting firms as far as output
growth is concerned. Moreover, output growth has triggered productivity growth as firms were
able to exploit economies of scale. However, output growth rather than export orientation was the
main determinant of productivity growth.
5. Firm level response: Exports
We now take a closer look at the pattern of export expansion. We have seen in the
previous section that output grows more in exporting firms. Focusing on Gabon only - the
presence of just one exporting firm in Chad makes the analysis much less meaningful - we find
that real output growth was significantly larger for exporting firms (9.3 %) than for the whole
sample (4.2 %). How far has this pattern led to an increasing export orientation of the economy?
Real export growth at 15.5% was substantially larger than real output growth for exporting firms,
supporting the notion that firms responded to the new constellation of relative prices by shifting
their output toward foreign markets. Indeed, the weighted average export share for Gabon’s
exporting firms went from 31.2% to 41.6%11.
Of special interest is to examine to which extent the export growth can be attributed to
incumbent firms, the net entry of new firms into the export markets, and the size differences
between entering and exiting firms (the turnover effect). Decomposing the sources of export
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