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Abstract
We study the self-selection effect among U.S. agribusiness firms in an attempt to better understand the export behavior of these firms. We use secondary firm-level financial data on almost 300 agribusiness firms to analyze the relationships between exports and firm size, capital intensity, firm profitability, and classification in one of 21 agribusiness sectors. Our results show that firm size has a small negative effect on the probability that an agribusiness firm exports and on the ratio of export sales to total sales, but capital intensity and recent profitability have little or no impact on export behavior. In contrast, the agribusiness sector in which a firm operates has a strong and robust impact on a firms export probability and intensity.