Old Firms and New Export Flows: Does Experience Increase Survival?

In this paper we present new empirical evidence on the relationship between exporting experience and the duration of exports at the firm-product-destination level. We find that the direct effect of experience on export flow survival is negative. However, when we include interactions between experience and firm export diversification measures, this effect becomes positive. This suggests that more experienced firms launch more risky export flows which increases the probability of failure of any individual product-destination pairing.