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dc.titleFirm-Embedded Productivity and Cross-Country Income Differences
dc.contributor.authorAlviarez, Vanessa
dc.contributor.authorCravino, Javier
dc.contributor.authorRamondo, Natalia
dc.contributor.orgunitDepartment of Research and Chief Economist
dc.date.available2021-02-04T00:00:00
dc.date.issue2021-02-04T00:00:00
dc.description.abstractWe measure the contribution of firm-embedded productivity to cross-country income differences. By firm-embedded productivity we refer to the components of productivity that differ across firms and that can be transferred internationally, such as blueprints, management practices, and intangible capital. Our approach relies on micro-level data on the cross-border operations of multinational enterprises (MNEs). We compare the market shares of the exact same MNE in different countries and document that they are about four times larger in developing than in high-income coun-tries. This finding indicates that MNEs face less competition in less-developed coun-tries, suggesting that firm-embedded productivity in those countries is scarce. We propose and implement a new measure of firm-embedded productivity based on this observation. We find a strong positive correlation between our measure and output per worker across countries. In our sample, differences in firm-embedded productivity account for roughly a third of the cross-country variance in output per worker.
dc.format.extent58
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.18235/0003029
dc.identifier.urlhttps://publications.iadb.org/publications/english/document/Firm-Embedded-Productivity-and-Cross-Country-Income-Differences.pdf
dc.language.isoen
dc.mediumAdobe PDF
dc.publisherInter-American Development Bank
dc.subjectManufacturing Industry
dc.subjectTechnology Transfer
dc.subjectBusiness Productivity
dc.subject.jelcodeF41 - Open Economy Macroeconomics
dc.subject.jelcodeF23 - Multinational Firms • International Business
dc.subject.jelcodeO1 - Economic Development
dc.subject.jelcodeF62 - Macroeconomic Impacts
dc.subject.jelcodeO4 - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
dc.subject.keywordsDevelopment Accounting;TFP;Multinational Enterprises
dc.typeWorking Papers
idb.identifier.pubnumberIDB-WP-01191
idb.operationRG-E1754
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