Este artículo presenta resultados nuevos sobre los precios de los insumos pagados por las plantas manufactureras en Colombia, utilizando información de la Encuesta Anual Manufacturera (EAM). Los resultados son los siguientes: (1) Los importadores son más exitosos que los no importadores, en...

Drawing on uncommonly rich and representative data from the Colombian manufacturing census, this paper documents new empirical relationships between input prices, output prices, and plant size and proposes a model of endogenous input and output quality choices by heterogeneous firms to explain...

This paper presents a tractable formalization and an empirical investigation of the quality-complementarity hypothesis, the hypothesis that input quality and plant productivity are complementary in generating output quality. We embed this complementarity in a general-equilibrium trade model with...

Researchers typically invoke theoretical assumptions to estimate mark-ups. Instead, we directly obtain mark-ups by surveying Pakistani soccer-ball producers. We document six facts: (1) Mark-ups are more dispersed than costs; (2) Mark-ups and costs increase with firm size; (3) The mark-up...

This paper examines the extent to which the destination of exports matters for the input prices paid by firms, using detailed customs and firm-product-level data from Portugal. We use exchange-rate movements as a source of variation in export destinations and find that exporting to richer...

This paper examines how schools choose class size and how households sort in response to those choices. Focusing on the highly liberalized Chilean education market, we develop a model in which schools are heterogeneous in an underlying productivity parameter, class size is a component of school...

A growing body of research suggests that difficulties in collecting taxes are an important constraint on economic performance in developing countries. Evidence from rich countries points to third- party reporting — in particular, employer reports of employees' wages — as a potential remedy....

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...

In the U.S., some sectoral evidence suggests that growth is driven mainly by productivity enhancing reallocation. In countries with greater barriers to entry and imperfect competition, the reallocation process may be inefficient. Therefore, for developing countries, an open question is whether...