Internationalize to live: a study on post-internationalization survival of new ventures

Despite a growing number of studies on the survival of new ventures who pursue an international entry strategy, research in this area is not yet conclusive. One line of argument tells a story of unprepared novices making a risky move, and thus predicts negative consequences. Another line of argument tells a story of prepared entrepreneurs making a strategic decision, and thus predicts positive consequences. This gives rise to an important theoretical and empirical endogeneity problem in the study of the consequences of internationalization that can only be overcome by accounting for the fact that new ventures self-select into internationalization. The goal of this research is to add to the post-internationalization survival literature by accounting for this self-selection in a survival analysis on a unique database of 4928 US new ventures, surveyed from 2004-2011. We found a positive effect of internationalization on survival, and also found that this effect is observed to be stronger for younger firms. We argue that these results suggest that the new theories of new venture internationalization needs to be further unchained from the process theories of internationalization.