Export Survival in the Russian Economy: The Role of Learning-By-Doing, Export Scale and Entrepreneurial Climate in Regions

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the impact of business climate and classical gravity variables on trade flows survival from export-oriented non-resource dependent Russian regions. We employ data on electronic copies of cargo custom declarations in 2002–2010 provided by the Federal Customs Service of the Russian Federation and build the database for the more than 45 000 export flows from of 20 export-oriented Russian regions. We test two types of business climate variables — those reflecting the quality of human and financial resources in a region and those reflecting the quality of administrative regulation and hard infrastructure. We control for uncertainty and time effects and find that the effects of improvements of business climate in a region are falling over time and that they are more important for bigger export values. Thus, there is an evidence of presence of learning curve and scale effects for exporters when the latter become more efficient with time in treating with regional-level resources and regulatory environment.