The collective action of global entrepreneurs ∗

Productivity sometimes depends on industry specific public goods, like standards of production, the existence of suppliers of intermediate inputs or information about technology and markets. Under-standing the provision of these inputs remains elusive, however, since these public goods are hetero-geneous and there is no systematic recording system analogous to the one for patents. As contribution, this paper explores the nature of participation in Business Association as a proxy for this cooperative activity of international entrepreneurs around the world. Using enterprise surveys from 67 countries the paper shows that exporters and importers participate more than other firms in Business Associa-tions, even after controlling for country and industrial sector, as well as conditioning on productivity. This additional participation of exporters is more intense in smaller countries. When exporters are asked what they value the most from Business Associations, they disproportionally mention "produc-tivity and information " services over "lobby and negotiation " services. The results are hard to reconcile with models in which the only role of Business Associations is to buy tariff protection or to collude in the product market. In contrast, our results seem one of the first pieces of econometric support for Alfred Marshall’s (1920) view that constructive cooperation is relatively more important for the dutie