Geography and Exporting Behavior : Evidence from India

This paper examines locational factors
that increase the odds of a firm's entry into export
markets and affect the intensity of its participation. It
differentiates between two different sources of spillovers:
clustering of general economic activity and that of
export-oriented activity. It also focuses on the effect of
the business environment and that of institutions at the
spatial unit of districts in India. The study disentangles
the within-industry effect from the within-firm effect. A
simple logit specification is used to model the probability
of entry. The analysis is based on a panel of manufacturing
firms in India, which allows for the introduction of
firm-specific controls and a battery of fixed effects. The
findings suggest that exporter-specific clustering, general
economic agglomeration, and institutional factors affect
firms' export behavior.