In this paper, we analyse employment and capital adjustments using a panel of plants from Colombia. We allow for nonlinear adjustment of employment to reflect not only adjustment costs of labour but also adjustment costs of capital, and vice-versa. Using data from the Annual Manufacturing...

Estimates for the US suggest that at least in some sectors productivity-enhancing reallocation is the dominant factor in accounting for productivity growth. An open question, particularly relevant for developing countries, is whether reallocation is always productivity enhancing. It may be that...

This paper presents a tractable formalization and an empirical investigation of the quality-complementarity hypothesis, the hypothesis that input quality and plant productivity are complementary in generating output quality. We embed this complementarity in a general-equilibrium trade model with...

We use a panel of manufacturing plants from Colombia to analyse how the rise in payroll tax rates over the 1980s and 1990s affected the labour market. Our estimates indicate that formal wages fall by between 1.4% and 2.3% as a result of a 10% rise in payroll taxes. This...

We analyse an oligopoly model in which differentiated criminal organizations compete on criminal activities and engage in corruption to avoid punishment. When law enforcers are sufficiently well-paid, difficult to bribe and corruption detection highly probable, we show that increasing policing...