This paper examines how firms in an emerging economy are affected by violence due to drug trafficking. Employing rich longitudinal plant-level data covering all of Mexico from 2005–2010, and using an instrumental variable strategy that exploits plausibly exogenous spatiotemporal variation in...

In recent years there has been a revival of interest in the trade-growth nexus. A number of authors have suggested that regional economic integration and liberalization of international trade are likely to have positive effects not only on productivity levels but also on long-term productivity...

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 offers new insights on a central question in trade and development economics: does increased exposure to foreign competition generate gains in plant productivity? We find that it does. We examine Colombian trade policy from 1977 to 1991, a period during which trade liberalization...

This paper analyzes the performance of Mexican manufacturing firms following trade liberalization within a very specific institutional setting: The North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA). We compare plants' productivity growth and patterns of job creation and destruction across their...

This paper explores a period of substantial variation in trade policy across industries in Colombia (1977-1991) to examine whether increased exposure to foreign competition generates productivity gains for manufacturing plants. Using an estimation methodology that addresses the shortcomings of...

We use plant output and input prices to decompose the profit margin into four parts: productivity, demand shocks, mark-ups and input costs. We find that each of these market fundamentals are important in explaining plant exit. We then use variation across sectors in tariff changes after the...

This study attempts to investigate the level of transient and persistent technical efficiencies of large- and medium-scale manufacturing establishments in Ethiopia. A stochastic frontier approach was used for Cobb–Douglas production technology and a panel data set (1996–2015) was developed...

We analyze the causal impact of the industrial policy structure on the formation of zombie firms, using a rich data set of manufacturing firms in China between 1998 and 2007. We find that selective industrial policy schemes increase zombie shares in skill intensive sectors, because as subsidized...

We examine the link between trade liberalization and aggregate productivity, with a focus on improved market selection resulting from a reduction in trade barriers and in the dispersion of these barriers across producers. Our analysis exploits tariff changes across sectors after the Colombian...