Total factor productivity (TFP) in Latin America has not increased relative to the US since the mid- 1970s, and in many countries it has declined. Moreover, resource misallocation can lower aggregate TFP. This paper presents evidence based on firm-level data from 10 Latin American countries to...

Total factor productivity (TFP) in Latin America has not increased since the mid- 1970s, and in many countries it has declined. Moreover, resource misallocation can lower aggregate TFP. This paper presents evidence based on firm-level data from 10 Latin American countries to quantify the...

Es sabido que, a pesar de las mejoras que tuvieron lugar en los últimos años, las exportaciones de varios países de América Latina y el Caribe aún se encuentran por debajo de su potencial y de lo que cabría esperar en función de sus niveles de desarrollo. Lo mismo sucede con el grado de...

Es sabido que, a pesar de las mejoras que tuvieron lugar en los últimos años, las exportaciones de varios países de América Latina y el Caribe aún se encuentran por debajo de su potencial y de lo que cabría esperar en función de sus niveles de desarrollo. Lo mismo sucede con el grado de...

It is well known that, despite improvements in recent years, a number of LAC countries' exports still remain below their potential and what would be expected judging from their levels of development. The same holds for their degrees of export diversification (Blyde et al., 2014). In addition,...

We use panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants to study the connection between plants´responses to changes in the economic environment and their contributions to aggregateproductivity growth in the period following the implementation of the North American TradeAgreement (NAFTA)...

We use panel data on Mexican manufacturing plants to study the connection between plants' responses to changes in the economic environment and their contributions to aggregate productivity growth in the period following the implementation of the North American Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In all...

The recovery from the current deep recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic will require raising productivity through structural reforms. This implies a number of challenges for economic policies. With large parts of the economy shielded from competition, firms face weak incentives to become...

Brazil spends around 15% of GDP on different social benefits, but within these expenditures, different benefits have different social impacts. While the small conditional cash transfer programme Bolsa Família is well-targeted to the poor and has a strong diminishing effect on inequality,...

We propose a new measure of allocative efficiency based on unrealized increases in aggregate productivity growth. We show that the difference in the value of the marginal product of an input and its marginal cost at any plant—the plant-input gap—is exactly equal to the change in aggregate...