Opening and linking up: Firms, global value chains and productivity in Latin America

Pierluigi Montalbano, Silvia Nenci () and Carlo Pietrobelli

No 2017-030, MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT)

Abstract: This work explores the relationship between exports, Global Value Chains' (GVCs) participation and position, and firms' productivity. To this aim, we combine the most recent World Bank Enterprise Survey in Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries with the OECD-WTO trade in value added data. To explore the above relationship we adopt an extended version of the standard Cobb-Douglas output function including indicators of export performance and GVCs. We control for heterogeneity among firms (by country, region, and industry), sample selection, firms' characteristics and reverse causality. Our empirical outcomes confirm the presence of a positive relationship between participation in international activities and firm performance. They also show that both participation in GVCs and position within GVCs matter. These findings have strong policy implications and may help policymakers in choosing the best policy options to enhance the link between GVCs integration and firms' productivity.

Keywords: Firm productivity; Exports; Trade in Value added; Global Value Chains; GCVs; learning by supplying (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 F14 F61 L22 O54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-07-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-eff, nep-int and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://unu-merit.nl/publications/wppdf/2017/wp2017-030.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:unumer:2017030

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MERIT Working Papers from United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ad Notten ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).