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ABSTRACT
We use a unique firm-level survey dataset that draws from the EFIGE (European Firms in a Global Economy) questionnaire to unveil differences in factors driving export performance in the most structurally diverse areas of Poland. While conventional results regarding the role of size, foreign ownership and innovation activity are confirmed at the aggregate level, the picture breaks down when Western and Eastern macroregions are extracted. Our results suggest that the common perception of a more developed West (Poland ‘A’) and a backward East (Poland ‘B’) might be outdated. Rather, firms in both regions seem to follow distinct strategies for and have dissimilar success factors in competing internationally. Interestingly, export performance in the East is found to benefit from family ties in business, but also from product innovation and non-price competitiveness. In the West, it is associated mostly with size and foreign ownership. Overall, our results, on the one hand, add support to the ‘new’ new trade theory and the ‘new’ new economic geography’s premises related to the importance of microeconomic factors and, on the other, contribute to the discussion on the pattern of regional development in Poland. We also discuss some implications for policymakers and managers and suggest directions for further research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Exports are the most commonly used measure because of their simplicity and data availability. But Altomonte et al. (Citation2012) and Navaretti et al. (Citation2010) also distinguish important indicators of firms’ competitiveness related to separate modes of internationalization such as indirect exports (using intermediaries in export market penetration), direct exports to small or big numbers of markets, exports to far-distance countries, exports of a big variety and number of products, scale of international outsourcing and outward FDIs. For more on determinants of FDI efficiency see for example, Gorynia and Trąbczyński (Citation2014).
2 For more on family companies and internationalization see Wach (Citation2014) and Daszkiewicz and Wach (Citation2014).
3 Data on regional GDP per capita extracted from Eurostat on 12.05.2016.
4 Additionally, the model specified in this way suffers from variance heteroscedasticity, which adds to our supposition of cross-regional heterogeneity (results not reported to save space – available upon request).
5 The composition of both macroregions was found to be robust to several orders of adding voivodships.
6 This picture seems to be a little surprising, but a similar situation occurs, for example, in Eastern and Western German manufacturing firms examined in terms of export activity during the great trade collapse in 2008 and 2009. Concentration of the largest Eastern German manufacturing exporters was found to be almost two times higher than in Western Germany (Wagner, Citation2012).
7 Non-price competitiveness (understood as an improving quality and diversity of traded goods) seems to be an important driver of export increases among Central Eastern European countries (Benkovskis & Wörz, Citation2013). Based on the research on Polish firms, Brzozowski and Tchorek (Citation2017) confirmed that non-price competitiveness make companies less vulnerable to exchange rate risk.