Export capacity: evidence for Brazilian companies

Abstract The aim of this essay is to verify if the innovation of Brazilian businesses has a positive impact on the probability of exporting and the intensity of exportation. The sample is made up of information from the crossover of PIA and PINTEC (Research of Technological Innovation), both from IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics), with the SECEX/MDIC records of foreign trade, for the years 2003, 2005 and 2008. The Probit, Bivariate Probit and Ordered Probit models were estimated. The results reveal that innovation has a positive influence on the propensity to export, especially when the lagging innovation variables are inserted into the model. However, the coefficients associated with the impact of innovation on the intensity of exportation were negative and statistically significant.