Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>We present novel evidence from the results of a randomized controlled trial on the role that information plays in the perceptions of the benefits and costs of exporting. We first present results from a baseline survey of approximately 1,000 UK manufacturing firms to show that non-exporters hold substantially more negative beliefs about the costs and benefits of exporting relative to exporters. We then explore the extent to which these differences in perceptions are due to a biased understanding of the true costs and benefits of exporting on the part of non-exporters, or are instead a reflection of underlying differences in performance characteristics across firms, the view assumed by most theories of international trade. To do this, we make targeted information available to a randomly selected subset of these firms in the form of information from the UK's export promotion agency about the benefits and costs of exporting. The results of our intervention reveal a surprising, asymmetric response on the part of exporters and non-exporters. Instead of revising their negative perceptions upward, treated non-exporters become more likely to report lower perceived benefits and higher perceived barriers compared to non-treated non-exporters. In contrast, the attitudes of existing exporters improve. We discuss different behavioral and non-behavioral explanations for this result and highlight possible implications for export promotion policies.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links https://repository.essex.ac.uk/16005/ Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Sample Trial population and sample selection Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables Results Intervention costs Cost benefit ratio Reference Citation for use in academic references
