PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS

Contents Introduction

Participation in exports differs substantially between plants even within industries. One plausible hypothesis is that foreign networks decrease export-costs and that plants with large amounts of such networks will be relatively likely to start export. We focus on two types of foreign networks: foreign ownership and import of intermediate products. Our results suggest that plants in Indonesian manufacturing with any foreign ownership are substantially more likely to start export than wholly domestically-owned plants. The results remain robust to alternative model specifications and after controlling for other plant characteristics. There is no effect on export from import of intermediate products.