International trade has been stated as one of the most important mean of improving firms' productivity, being the channel behind, the technology transfer from foreign companies to local firms. Focusing on imports, they can positively contribute to local firm's productivity performance by...

This paper documents the relationship between regional financial development and firm growth in the Peruvian manufacturing sector. In order to control for mutual causality between credit availability and firm growth, industry differences in financial dependence on external funds are exploited....

Our knowledge of the trade effects of domestic infrastructure is very limited. The reason is twofold. First, data needed to examine these effects are not readily available. Second, identifying such effects requires properly addressing potential endogeneity problems affecting the relationship...

This paper estimates the impact of relative price volatility on sector-level investment allocation using a panel of 65 countries with data for 26 manufacturing industries over the period 1985-2003. Results indicate that volatility distorts efficient investment allocation in that investment is...

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...

The link between innovation and employment is at the center of the policy debate. This paper sheds light on how labor market regulations affect the relationship between different types of innovation and employment in Latin America. We estimate the model developed by Harrison et al. (2014) using...

This paper estimates the direct and spillover effects of two matching grants schemes designed to promote firm-level research and development (R&D) investment in Chile on firm productivity. Because the two programs target different kinds of projects - the National Productivity and Technological...

In this paper, we analyze the impact of Chinese competition on manufacturing firms in El Salvador between 2005 and 2013 using manufacturing survey data and customs transaction data. We find that Chinese import competition in El Salvador has a negative effect on firms employment, total factor...

We study the impact of import competition on Mexican firm outcomes between 2003 and 2013 by exploiting variation in import penetration across industries. Focusing on the increase in import competition from China that Mexico experienced during this period, we find that the trade shock induced a...

While Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been exposed to frequent external shocks in the past, the Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is like no other, representing the largest economic shock experienced globally in decades. The objective of this paper is to...