LA DISTANCIA Y LOS NEGOCIOS INTERNACIONALES: ANÁLISIS DE LAS EMPRESAS EXPORTADORAS COLOMBIANAS

Abstract

Many factors condition the decisions that firms make when expanding into different international markets, where the issue of distance plays a relevant role. The aim of this paper is to contribute to this issue by conducting an exploratory analysis of how distance affects the internationalization of companies that export from Colombia. To fulfill this objective, a detailed review of different related studies was developed and a database with information at the company level was built to find if there was a relationship between the export variables compared to various characteristics of the exporter. As main results, it was found that the companies of nascent internationalization of the last years have reached more distant markets than those of greater antiquity, in particular those constituted after the year 1990, tendency that is explained mainly by the economic liberalization policies where Colombia opened unilaterally to the world market. Likewise, it was proved that, like several authors have pointed out in this literature review, the size of the companies conditions the reach of geographically more distant markets

Keywords

• distance
• economic openness
• exporting companies
• internationalization