Trade Shocks and Factor Adjustment Frictions: Implications for Investment and Labor

Erhan Artuc, Germán Bet, Irene Brambilla and Guido Porto

IIE, Working Papers from IIE, Universidad Nacional de La Plata

Abstract: When export opportunities arise, the gains from trade can only be materialized if the economy adjusts. In order to expand and meet new markets, firms must hire new workers and tune their capital stock by investing in product lines, machines and equipment. If this process is costly and imperfect, the economy reacts partially and gradually. We formulate a multi-sector dynamic model featuring capital adjustment costs, firm heterogeneity, and labor mobility costs that we fit to data from Argentina. We estimate the structural capital and labor adjustment cost parameters and using counterfactual simulations we quantify the complementarity between trade shocks and domestic frictions: in the presence of lower costs of factor adjustment there is a sizeable incremental impact of trade shocks on capital, employment, wages, and output. The complementarity is larger for smaller trade shocks, and a large fraction of the capital complementarity is explained by an extensive margin (i.e. firms which do not respond to trade shocks when adjustment costs are high).

Keywords: Trade Shocks; Capital Adjustment Costs; Labor Mobility; Firm Heterogeneity; Invsetment; Labor Market Dynamics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 F6 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56 pages
Date: 2013-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Trade Shocks and Factor Adjustment Frictions: Implications for Investment and Labor (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:akh:wpaper:101

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