One of the goals of the government is to increase the competitiveness of domestic firms to export goods and services. Moreover, the role of exports in many economic sectors has been emphasized. There are two essential requirements for developing non-oil exports: first, the presence of firms in export markets and increasing their competitiveness; second, the survival of them in international markets. This paper assesses the impact of leverage on export survival by using the data of 16 Iranian manufacturing firms from 1999-2018. These companies operate in the agricultural and food industry and are indexed in the stock exchange market. Based on Cox semi-parametric model estimation, the main result is that leverage harms export survival.
