 Trade, Technology, and Productivity: A Study of Brazilian Manufacturers, 1986-1998University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC San Diego Abstract: Brazil's trade liberalization between 1990 and 1993, and its partial re- versal in 1995, are used to study how reduced inward trade barriers affect productivity. The production function of Brazilian manufactur- ers is estimated at the ISIC3 two-digit level under various alternatives, including an extension of Olley and Pakes' (1996) procedure. Firm-level productivity is inferred and then related to trade. Findings suggest that (1) foreign competition pressures firms to raise productivity markedly, whereas (2) the use of foreign inputs plays a minor role for produc- tivity change. (3) The shutdown probability of inefficient firms rises with competition from abroad, thus contributing positively to aggre- gate productivity. Counterfactual simulations indicate that the compet- itive push (1) is an important source of immediate productivity change, while the elimination of inefficient firms (3) unfolds its impact slowly. Keywords: Productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:ucsdec:qt6m96c2r7 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC San Diego Contact information at EDIRC. |
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