A utilidade das visitas oficiais: a percepção dos empresários que integram as comitivas oficiais

Abstract

The participation of businessmen in official visits done by Heads of State or Government is a way found by official authorities to promote exports and the internationalization of the firms. There is a large body of literature about export promotion and the evaluation of export promotion programs. However, to date, it seems has not been evaluated the usefulness of official visits as a way to promote firms exports. This study provides a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature. The study presents a theoretical basis to substantiate the usefulness of official visits found in the literature about export promotion, export promotion programs and trade missions. A survey was done questioning Portuguese businessmen who had participated in 12 official visits to evaluate the usefulness of those visits. Additionally, the study proposes a multivariable model to examine how firm and visit caractheristics do affect, or not, the firms evaluation about official visits. The estimated results suggest that the quality of contacts and information gained during the visit positively affect the impact over a set of objectives. The results also reveal that factors such as firm s size, foreign ownership, export intensity, R&D intensity, experience in the market, the existence of previous contacts or business, or first visit to the market affect the firms evaluation about some objectives of official visits.