Late-movers outperform first-movers in export markets

Introduction

First-movers generate information that can be used by late-movers to a market. Exporters can learn from each other about product demand, consumer preferences, quality standards, regulations, and distribution networks at destination. I take the exporter dynamics research further by studying whether first- movers outperform late-movers at the product-destination level in export markets.

I use a unique disaggregated exporter-level customs dataset from nine origin countries. The analysis distinguishes old from new products at the origin-firm-product-destination level over time, orders precisely the entry of firms and products from ori- gin to destination, looks at all (successful and failing) cases of exporters and exported products, and ensures that re-entry of intermittent products are not counted as new products when ordering the movers to a given product-destination market. The results show that late-movers outperform first-movers at the product-destination export market level