The effect of market competition on firm innovation remains controversial, especially in the context of developing countries. This paper presents new empirical evidence about the causal impact of competition on firm innovation for Chilean and Colombian manufacturing firms. Using...

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...

The laws that regulate relations between firms and workers in Mexico distinguish sharply between salaried and non-salaried workers, and they are at the root of the existence of informality. This paper provides a clear definition of informality, distinguishing it from illegality. Using Mexico's...

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...

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...

Using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) between 2000 and 2014, this paper investigates the effect of labor contract modalities on firm productivity within the industrial sector through a structural model. We find that temporary workers contribute to firms' labor productivity to a...

Uruguay's inability to sustain high levels of economic growth cannot be fully explained by external shocks, the prevailing institutional setting or the level of human capital accumulation. Instead, low investment in knowledge capital stands as a most likely explanation. This hypothesis is...

This paper studies the impact that import competition from China had on firms performance in the manufacturing sector in Peru in 2005-2015. Using a firm-level dataset that covers the universe of firms in the formal sector, our results reveal that Peruvian firms reacted to increased competition...

This paper attempts to establish a formal relationship between innovation and productivity using Colombian firm-level data. It is found that the production of goods and services new to the firm and to the domestic market enhances firms` sales per worker, and innovation that results in...