The determinants of regional manufactured exports from a developing country

Abstract

In this article, the question of the location of exporters of manufactured goods within a country is investigated. Data from 354 magisterial districts in South Africa are used with a variety of estimators to identify the determinants of regional manufactured exports. It is found that the home-market effect (measured by the size of local gross domestic product) and distance (measured as the distance in km to the nearest port) are significant determinants of regional manufactured exports. This article contributes to the literature by using developing country data and by adding to the small literature on this topic. This article complements recent work on the determinants of exports from European regions and finds that distance is relatively more important in the developing country context than in the European case.