TY - JOUR A1 - Cardot, Olivier A1 - Iacovone, Leonardo A1 - Pierola, Martha Denisse A1 - Rauch, Ferdinand T1 - Success and failure of African exporters JF - Journal of Development Economics N2 - Using a new dataset with transaction-level export data from four African countries (Malawi, Mali, Senegal and Tanzania), this paper explores the determinants of success upon entry into export markets, defined as survival beyond the first year at the firm-product-destination level. We find that the probability of success rises with the number of same-country firms exporting the same product to the same destination, suggesting the existence of cross-firm externalities. We explore several conjectures on the determinants of these externalities and provide evidence suggestive of information spillovers, possibly mediated through the banking system. Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2012.12.004 VL - 101 SP - 284 EP - 296 ER -