What determines the aggregate and distributional effects of new transportation infrastructure? One key overlooked channel is the role that infrastructure policy plays in changing the incentives of firms to enter, exit, and grow--in turn generating endogenous changes in local productivity. In...

This paper analyzes total factor productivity growth in agriculture in Latin America and the Caribbean between 1961 and 2007 employing the Malmquist Index, a non-parametric methodology that uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods. The results show that among developing regions, Latin...

This paper analyzes reforms and counter-reforms in Bolivia in recent decades and their effects on the policymaking process (PMP) and productivity. Bolivia s PMP has shifted from a formal representative democracy to a participative and direct type of democracy where street protest and other...

We explore the nature of Business Groups, that is network-like forms of hierarchical organization between legally autonomous firms spanning both within and across national borders. Exploiting a unique dataset of 270,474 headquarters controlling more than 1,500,000 (domestic and foreign)...

Productivity growth in Indian manufacturing is an important driver of overall growth, yet the issues related to its measurement have still not been resolved. The issue of how to compute an aggregate productivity measure holds significance for two reasons: one, the productivity of a firm should...

This study estimates Climate Adjusted Total Factor Productivity (CATFP) for agriculture in Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) countries, while also providing comparisons with several regions of the world. Climatic variability is introduced in Stochastic Production Frontier (SPF) models by...

Following Hsieh and Klenow (2009), this paper studies productivity dispersions in Colombian industrial establishments using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) from 1982 to 1998. The United States is used as a benchmark to estimate the reallocation of capital and labor to equalize...

Using a large, original database of 385 politically connected firms under the Mubarak regime in Egypt, we document for the first time the negative impact of cronyism on economic growth. In the early 2000s, a policy shift in Egypt led to the expansion of crony activities into new, previously...