The NAFTA tide: Lifting the larger and better boats

Angel Calderon-Madrid and Alexandru Voicu

The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, 2011, vol. 20, issue 4, 467-505

Abstract: We use panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants to study the connection between plants' responses to changes in the economic environment and their contributions to aggregate total factor productivity growth, in the period following the implementation of the North American Trade Agreement. An overwhelming share of industry-level aggregate total factor productivity growth is accounted for by a small number of plants, which were larger and more productive before the implementation of NAFTA and expanded and became more productive following the implementation of NAFTA. Plants that exported before NAFTA and exported continuously through to 2000, and new exporters, are more likely to be among the top-performing plants. The performance of plants with similar exporting experience displays, however, remarkable heterogeneity: a significant number of plants that never export have strong output and productivity performance, while many exporters display poor performance. Spending on research and development, and three variables describing plants' level of integration in the global markets - foreign direct investment, use of imported intermediary inputs, and investment in foreign capital goods - are positively correlated with output and productivity performance.

Keywords: NAFTA; trade liberalization; total factor productivity; heterogeneity of plant-level performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09638190903191773 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The NAFTA Tide: Lifting the Larger and Better Boats (2007)
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:taf:jitecd:v:20:y:2011:i:4:p:467-505

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJTE20

DOI: 10.1080/09638190903191773

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development is currently edited by Pasquale Sgro, David E.A. Giles and Charles van Marrewijk

More articles in The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().