The final test is to investigate the full effect of the crisis on export exit. To examine whether the crisis dummy exerts a significant direct effect on export exit after controlling for its indirect impact, we incorporate the crisis dummy on its own along with the interacted terms in Equations 4.4 and 4.5. Results are presented in Tables 4 and 5 (column 6). They show that the crisis has a positive and statistically significant effect on export market exit. More importantly, the inclusion of the dummy does not change the results on the interaction terms.
7 Conclusion
We use firm level data for the UK to investigate the link between firms’ financial health, the borrowing ratio and export exit. In particular, we look at whether firms which face different levels of borrowing ratios react differently to changes in financial variables during crisis and tranquil periods. This may be expected as firms’ real activities are adversely affected by a rise in borrowing costs which provides strong evidence in favour of a monetary policy effect through the changes in the costs of debt servicing.
Our empirical results show that the impact of access to finance on the hazard of export market exit differs is exacerbated during the crisis. In general, changes in the financial status of the firm have a much stronger impact on the risk of export failure during the recent financial crisis than the outside period. Most importantly, we find that increases in debt servicing costs positively affect the likelihood of export exit during the crisis. Firms facing high interest payment obligations are more likely to exit the export market during 2007-09 compared to firms with lower interest payments.
An increase in the number of firms dropping out of export markets during the crisis should be of concern to policy makers. These firms are unlikely to simply re-enter export markets after the crisis, since sunk costs are important for export decisions. Instead, they may behave just like first time exporters, relying on the same export promotion policies as firms that have never exported before.
Appendix
Definitions of the variables
Export exiter: dummy variable equal to 1 if the firm exported in t-1 and t-2 but not in t.
BR: ratio of interest payments to profit and loss after taxes plus depreciation.
BR2: ratio of interest payments to a moving average of three year of data on total debt.
Leverage: ratio of short term debt to total assets.
Liquidity: ratio of current assets less current liabilities to total assets.
Size: logarithm of real total assets.
Age: difference between the present year and the firm’s date of incorporation.
Productivity: labour productivity defined as sales per employee
Exchange Rate: effective exchange rate calculated as a geometric weighted average of bilat-eral exchange rates adjusted by relative consumer prices.
Deflators: all variables are deflated using the industry-specific price of output
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Table 1: Summary Statistics
Total Sample Exiter=1 Exiter=0 Diff. Crisis=1 Crisis=0 Diff.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Leverage 0.374 0.381 0.367 0.000 0.321 0.387 0.000
(0.30) (0.31) (0.30) (0.27) (0.32)
Liquidity 0.143 0.138 0.151 0.000 0.198 0.129 0.000
(0.26) (0.26) (0.29) (0.25) (0.26)
Borrowing Ratio 0.363 0.391 0.339 0.000 0.376 0.308 0.000
(0.37) (0.38) (0.36) (0.38) (0.34)
Size 4.436 4.579 4.311 0.000 4.285 4.475 0.000
(1.38) (1.35) (1.39) (1.29) (1.40)
Age 26.748 27.069 26.470 0.031 28.550 26.278 0.000
(23.71) (24.37) (23.40) (23.44) (23.75)
P roductivity 2.104 2.066 2.137 0.000 2.206 2.078 0.000
(0.85) (0.82) (0.88) (1.14) (0.75)
Exchange 99.099 100.623 97.770 0.000 84.218 102.987 0.000
(11.19) (10.26) (11.78) (9.36) (7.88)
Observations 29,420 11,851 17,569 6,094 23,326
Notes: The table presents sample means. Standard deviations are reported in parentheses. Dif f.is the p-value of the test statistic for the of means.Leveragemeasured as the firm’s short-term debt to assets ratio.Liquidityis defined as the ratio of the firm’s current assets less current liabilities over total assets. Borrowing Ratiois defined as the ratio of interest payments to profit and loss after taxes plus depreciation. Sizeis given by the log of the firm’s real assets measured in thousands of UK sterling. Ageis defined as the difference between the present year and the firm’s date of incorporation. P roductivitydenotes labour productivity defined as sales per employee. Exchangeis the real effective exchange rate. Crisistakes value 1 in the years 2007-2009, and 0 otherwise. The time period is 2000-2009.
Table 2: Baseline Model
Notes: The dependent variable is a dummy equal to one if a firm exits the export market in yeart, and zero otherwise. Robust z-statistics are presented in the parentheses. * significant at 10%; **significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. Time dummies, industry dummies and regional dummies were included in the model. Table presents the p-values of a test for the equality of the coefficients on liquidity and leverage. Also see notes to Table 1.
Table 3: Borrowing Ratio Liquidity*Crisis∗(1−HBR) -0.455*** -0.552***
(-5.5) (-4.19) Liquidity*(1−Crisis)∗(1−HBR) -0.244*** -0.230***
(-3.98) (-4.57) Leverage*(1−Crisis)*(1−HBR) 0.161*** 0.077**
(2.76) (2.19)
Liquidity∗(1−HBR) 0.039 0.019
Leverage∗HBR 0.054 0.009
Leverage∗(1−HBR) 0.261 0.225
Liquidity∗Crisis 0.060 0.053
Liquidity∗(1−Crisis) 0.394 0.016
Leverage∗Crisis 0.074 0.055
Leverage∗(1−Crisis) 0.271 0.031
Notes: The dependent variable is a dummy equal to one if a firm exits the export market in yeart, and zero otherwise. Robust z-statistics are presented in the parentheses. * significant at 10%; **significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. Time dummies, industry dummies and regional dummies were included in the model. HBR is a dummy equal to one if the borrowing ratio falls in the top 50% of the borrowing ratio distribution. Table presents the p-values of a test for the equality of the coefficients on the interacted terms. Also see notes to Table 1.
Table 4: Robustness: Baseline Model
Re-define Re-define xtcloglog IV Alternative Full effect
sample exiter crisis of crisis
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Liquidity*Crisis -0.321*** -1.200*** -2.024*** -0.580*** -0.633*** -0.690***
(-3.11) (-6.24) (-4.11) (-4.16) (-5.20) (-7.11) Liquidity*(1−Crisis) -0.140*** -0.335*** -0.632*** -0.318*** -0.297*** -0.268***
(-2.86) (-5.47) (-2.60) (-5.97) (-7.63) (-6.71) Leverage*Crisis 0.075 0.503*** 0.905*** 0.387*** 0.288*** 0.257***
(0.82) (3.10) (3.10) (2.58) (2.80) (2.97)
Leverage*(1−Crisis) -0.018 0.021 0.283 0.042 0.082*** 0.076**
(-0.46) (0.41) (1.53) (1.02) (2.63) (2.40)
Crisis 1.414***
(5.44)
Size 0.063*** 0.169*** 0.402*** 0.086*** 0.090*** 0.090***
(7.34) (16.65) (6.67) (11.88) (13.56) (13.53)
Age 0.004*** 0.003*** 0.001 -0.001 -0.000 -0.000
(8.96) (6.61) (0.53) (-1.45) (-0.96) (-0.97) P roductivity -0.015 -0.053* -0.033 -0.007 -0.025* -0.024*
(-1.24) (-1.85) (-0.58) (-0.64) (-1.92) (-1.88) Exchange 0.028*** 0.052*** 0.060*** 0.038*** 0.024*** 0.056***
(17.11) (16.10) (8.33) (7.34) (14.41) (8.62) Observations 15,949 29,420 29,420 21,986 29,420 29,420 Test of equality
Liquidity 0.000 0.002 0.007 0.098 0.008 0.000
Leverage 0.000 0.004 0.067 0.025 0.054 0.048
Notes: The dependent variable is a dummy equal to one if a firm exits the export market in yeart, and zero otherwise. Robust z-statistics are presented in the parentheses. * significant at 10%; **significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. Time dummies, industry dummies and regional dummies were included in the model. Table presents the p-values of a test for the equality of the coefficients on the interacted terms. Columns 1 presents results for a shorter sample of firms that started exporting for the first time in 2000. In columns 2 the dependent variable is re-defined to include only firms which exit the export market definitely.
Columns 3 reports results on the random-effect proportional hazard model. In columns 4 the specification was estimated using instrumental variable technique for probit models. Column 5 reports results based on the 2008-09 crisis period and column 6 includes the crisis dummy on its own and the interactions with leverage and liquidity. Also see notes to Table 1.
Table 5: Robustness: Borrowing Ratio
Re-define Re-define xtcloglog IV Alternative Full effect
sample exiter crisis of crisis
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Liquidity*Crisis*HBR -0.565*** -1.154*** -1.900*** -1.133*** -0.658*** -0.707***
(-4.18) (-4.82) (-3.65) (-4.15) (-4.09) (-5.41) Liquidity*(1−Crisis)*HBR -0.112* -0.380*** -0.542** -0.421** -0.328*** -0.306***
(-1.86) (-4.82) (-2.06) (-2.11) (-6.62) (-6.04) Liquidity*Crisis∗(1−HBR) -0.221 -0.624*** -0.958*** -0.516** -0.434*** -0.455***
(-1.48) (-3.65) (-3.64) (-2.36) (-4.12) (-5.5) Liquidity*(1−Crisis)∗(1−HBR) -0.125 -0.359*** -0.580* -0.141 -0.277*** -0.244***
(-1.60) (-3.94) (-1.80) (-0.92) (-4.67) (-3.98) Leverage*Crisis*HBR 0.073 0.425** 0.745 0.545*** 0.282** 0.235**
(0.70) (2.17) (1.64) (3.01) (3.15) (3.38)
Leverage*(1−Crisis)*HBR -0.056 0.009 0.253 0.254*** 0.092*** 0.089***
(-1.37) (0.18) (1.40) (3.36) (2.80) (2.67)
Leverage*Crisis*(1−HBR) -0.054 0.357 0.276 0.178 0.183 0.021
(-0.34) (1.33) (0.39) (0.31) (1.00) (0.14)
Leverage*(1−Crisis)*(1−HBR) 0.019 -0.540*** -0.073 0.349 0.167*** 0.161***
(0.26) (-5.54) (-0.25) (0.52) (2.94) (2.76)
Crisis 1.519***
(5.52)
Size 0.059*** 0.166*** 0.287*** -0.497*** 0.081*** 0.081***
(6.66) (15.85) (5.59) (-3.02) (11.63) (11.59)
Age 0.004*** 0.004*** -0.000 0.004** -0.001 -0.001
(8.21) (6.68) (-0.14) (2.51) (-1.63) (-1.64)
P roductivity -0.021 -0.037 -0.027 -0.181*** -0.019 -0.018
(-1.56) (-1.31) (-0.47) (-3.27) (-1.38) (-1.34) Exchange 0.028*** 0.051*** 0.058*** 0.064*** 0.024*** 0.024***
(16.37) (15.33) (7.72) (7.04) (13.79) (15.00)
Observations 14,947 27,254 27,254 14,460 27,254 27,254
Test of equality
Liquidity∗HBR 0.006 0.002 0.032 0.052 0.049 0.004
Liquidity∗(1−HBR) 0.564 0.151 0.065 0.152 0.153 0.039
Leverage∗HBR 0.248 0.039 0.303 0.082 0.031 0.054
Leverage∗(1−HBR) 0.673 0.001 0.645 0.837 0.912 0.261
Liquidity∗Crisis 0.082 0.069 0.087 0.075 0.089 0.06
Liquidity∗(1−Crisis) 0.883 0.847 0.917 0.129 0.461 0.394
Leverage∗Crisis 0.416 0.804 0.493 0.511 0.578 0.074
Leverage∗(1−Crisis) 0.258 0.000 0.214 0.856 0.645 0.271
Notes: The dependent variable is a dummy equal to one if a firm exits the export market in yeart, and zero otherwise. Robust z-statistics are presented in the parentheses. * significant at 10%; **significant at 5%; *** significant at 1%. Time dummies, industry dummies and regional dummies were included in the model. Table presents the p-values of a test for the equality of the coefficients on the interacted terms. Also see notes to Table 1, 3 and 4.
Table A-1: Detailed Statistics of Size Variables
Notes: The table presents the median and the upper and lower quartiles of three size measures.
Table A-2: Correlation Matrix
BR Leverage Liquidity Size Age Productivity Exchange
BR 1.000
Leverage 0.353 1.000
Liquidity -0.265 -0.377 1.000
Size 0.056 0.074 0.013 1.000
Age -0.064 -0.104 0.123 0.193 1.000
P roductivity 0.032 0.037 -0.001 -0.248 -0.054 1.000
Exchange 0.067 0.062 -0.108 0.034 -0.045 -0.059 1.000
Notes: The table presents the correlation coefficients between regressors.
Table A-3: Structure of the unbalanced panel Number of obs. Number of firms Percent Cumulative per firm