A stylised fact of the economic literature suggests that export diversification is good for economic growth and is associated with economic development. In addition, there is evidence suggesting that the level of sophistication of countries’ exports “matters” for growth and development....

This paper uses a novel approach to measure technology adoption at the firm level and applies it to a representative sample of firms in the state of Ceara in Brazil. The paper develops a new measure of technology adoption at the firm level, which identifies the purpose for which technologies are...

There is limited evidence on the role of participating in international trade in the diffusion of technologies. This paper analyzes the impact of exporting on firms' adoption of more sophisticated technologies, using a novel dataset, the Firm-level Adoption of Technology survey, which includes...

This paper explores the link between exports and total factor productivity (TFP) in Brazilian manufacturing firms over the period 2000–2008. The Brazilian experience is instructive as it is a case of an economy that expanded aggregate exports significantly, but with stagnant aggregate TFP...

This paper explores the link between exports and total factor productivity (TFP) for Brazilian manufacturing firms over the period 2000-2008, both under the assumption of an exogenous or an endogenous law of motion for productivity. The authors first obtain TFP estimates under each alternative...

This paper estimates the impact of technology sophistication pre-COVID-19 on the performance of firms during the early stages of the pandemic. We exploit a unique data covering firms from Brazil, Senegal, and Vietnam using a treatment effect mediation framework to decompose the results into a...