Abstract

Most of the literature on the link between firm’s participation in international markets and firms’ heterogeneity focuses on the choice of firms to export. This paper addresses on an aspect of firms internationalization so far little explored, the choice of the number of export destinations that can be considered as an indicator of the complexity of the export activity. As the outcome variables are a count with an excess of zeros, we operate in a hurdle regression model for count data framework. Besides the variables usually adopted in literature describing firms’ heterogeneity, in order to explore the link among the firms efficiency in generating profits and the firms internationalization choices, we consider a set of profitability indexes. Results we obtain enlighten that the set of the variables related to the decision of exporting and that connected with the number international markets served is different. At first, it seems that not only the larger the number of markets served, the more productive, large and willing to invest is the firm (confirming the features found studying the propensity to export), but also that firms engaged in multiple markets seem to be older, financially stable, and willing to support organizational and managerial innovations. By comparing the estimates regarding the propensity to export model and those of the model describing the number of export destinations, some main differences arise. At first the Return on Sales index become significant in the number of destinations model whereas this covariate was not relevant in explaining the propensity to export: it seems that the firms, the more opened to the international markets, are characterized by a better use of investment funds to generate earnings growth. Secondly, in the count model significance has been found for only one type of innovation, the managerial one, indicating that, although the innovation activity seems to be pivotal for exporting, once the firm exports, the change in the managerial and organizational structure become important to align to the more competitive market.