Online_revised

In the paper "Inclusive Trade Through Online Presence", Emmanuel Orkoh and myself examine whether online presence contributes to inclusiveness by helping firms that traditionally struggle to enter export markets do so. Using the World Bank’s enterprise survey data covering more than 180,000 enterprises from 154 countries, we find that being online has a positive and statistically significant effect on the probability of a firm becoming an exporter, increasing this probability by an average of 8 percentage points. There is further evidence that online presence increases the level of a firm’s exports by 37%. We also find supporting evidence that online presence is linked with an increase in the likelihood of foreign market entry for enterprises owned and managed by women, firms with a majority female workforce, small and medium-sized enterprises, firms from lower income countries and developing regions of the world, as well as firms in the services sector. These results have accounted for possible endogeneity of online presence, self-selection into exporting, and industry and country-year heterogeneity. They suggest that measures to promote digitalization and improve the business environment can offer effective ways of fostering more inclusive trade.