Factor-Biased Efficiency Gains from Exporting: Evidence from Colombia

Davide Luparello Joonkyo Hong

No 26279, BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers from BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy

Abstract: New exporters often adopt new technology, which may reorganize production rather than lift output uniformly, so efficiency gains can land unevenly across inputs. We examine such gains across worker types in Colombian manufacturing, 1981–1991. We develop a model of exporters that measures how efficiently firms use each input and grounds a comparison of new exporters with non-exporters matched on export likelihood. We find that export entry raises the plant-level efficiency of unskilled labor by about 9.4% per year, with no detectable change for skilled labor, implying a 2% annual rise in total factor productivity. We estimate that the two worker types are complements. Exporters thus produce more with relatively less unskilled labor, raising skill intensity.

Keywords: exporting; factor-biased technical change; production-function estimation; skill intensity. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D24 F14 J24 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69
Date: 2026
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-iaf and nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.unibocconi.it/baffic/baf/papers/cbafwp26279.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:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp26279

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers from BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy Via Röntgen, 1 - 20136 Milano - Italy. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michela Pozzi ().