The aim of this article is to verify empirically the hypothesis concerning the importance of innovations for firm involvement in export activities using firm-level data for Poland and the probit model. In this article, we examine whether it is possible to confirm the predictions of the Melitz [2003] model with respect to the occurrence of a positive relationship between firm productivity and the likelihood of exporting, taking into account the research and development activity of firms and other firm characteristics that may be important for their export activity. The selection of explanatory variables such as firm size, the use of human capital, spending onR&Dand firm internationalization measured by the share of foreign capital and the use of foreign licenses is consistent with other empirical studies based on firm-level data. We also try to analyse the importance of different forms of innovation for the export activity. Our empirical results clearly confirm the role of R&D spending, while the results obtained for various forms of innovations are less clear-cut.

The aim of this article is to verify empirically the hypothesis concerning the importance of innovations for firm involvement in export activities using firm-level data for Poland and the probit model. In this article, we examine whether it is possible to confirm the predictions of the Melitz [2003] model with respect to the occurrence of a positive relationship between firm productivity and the likelihood of exporting, taking into account the research and development activity of firms and other firm characteristics that may be important for their export activity. The selection of explanatory variables such as firm size, the use of human capital, spending onR&Dand firm internationalization measured by the share of foreign capital and the use of foreign licenses is consistent with other empirical studies based on firm-level data. We also try to analyse the importance of different forms of innovation for the export activity. Our empirical results clearly confirm the role of R&D spending, while the results obtained for various forms of innovations are less clear-cut.