Export market participation, spillovers, and foreign direct investment in Australian food manufacturing

Abstract

Abstract Generating a more outward looking sector has been one of the principal aims of agrifood policy in Australia for the past two decades. Australia's proximity to fast‐growing economies of East Asia has been seen as a major source for export growth. Over the same time span, there has been an increase in foreign ownership in the food sector. Using a firm‐level data set for 2005, we characterize the probability that a firm participates in exporting by a set of firm characteristics, including foreign ownership and spillovers from foreign‐owned firms, and find that foreign ownership neither increases nor decreases the probability that a firm will be involved in exporting. [EconLit citations: Q170, Q130]. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.