While there is strong evidence that becoming an exporter increases a firm’s productivity, underlying mechanisms that explain such a relationship remain largely unexplored. This paper analyses the contribution of the complementarity between exporting and investment in technology as a potential driver of export-related productivity gains. We employ firm-level data on production and trade combined with information on new products in the French dairy industry to conduct a causal mediation analysis between exporting, innovation investment, innovation output and productivity. Our estimation result show that starting exports increase the productivity by eight percentage points. Our mediation analysis reveals that innovation (investment and output) explains 31 per cent of this productivity growth.

中文翻译：

---

创新是否有助于解释出口对生产率的影响？来自法国乳制品行业的证据

尽管有强有力的证据表明，成为出口商可以提高公司的生产率，但解释这种关系的根本机制在很大程度上仍未被探索。本文分析了出口和技术投资之间的互补性作为出口相关生产率增长的潜在驱动力的贡献。我们利用企业层面的生产和贸易数据，结合法国乳制品行业新产品的信息，对出口、创新投资、创新产出和生产率之间进行因果中介分析。我们的估算结果表明，开始出口可以使生产率提高八个百分点。我们的中介分析显示，创新（投资和产出）解释了生产率增长的 31%。