Product Quality, Productive Efficiency, and International Technology Diffusion : Evidence from Plant-Level Panel Data

Kraay, Aart ; Soloaga, Isidro ; Tybout, James

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: PRODUCT QUALITY;    PRODUCTIVITY;    EFFICIENCY;    TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION;    ENTERPRISES;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-2759
RP-ID  :  WPS2759

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

What mechanisms most frequently transmitforeign technologies to developing country firms? Do theseforeign technologies affect both productive efficiency andproduct quality in the recipient firms? Under whatcircumstances do firms pursue activities that give themaccess to foreign knowledge? To address these questions, theauthors develop a new methodology and apply the framework toplant-level panel data from Colombia, Mexico, and Morocco.Their results point to several basic messages. First, byimposing enough structure on the production function and thedemand system, it is possible to measure product quality andmarginal costs at the plant level and to relate theevolution of these variables to firms' activityhistories. Doing so, the authors find strong firm-levelpersistence in both quality and marginal costs. But in mostindustry or country panels that they study, pastinternational activities help little in predicting currentperformance once past realizations on quality and marginalcost are controlled for. That is, activities do nottypically Granger-cause performance. Interestingly, in theminority of cases where significant associations emerge,international activities appear to move costs and productquality in the same direction. So the net effect on profitsin these cases is not immediately apparent. Second, severalbasic patterns emerge with respect to the determinants ofinternational activities. Most fundamentally, activities arehighly persistent, even after unobserved heterogeneity iscontrolled for. That suggests that firms incur sunkthreshold costs when they initiate or cease activities, sotemporary policy or macroeconomic shocks may have long-runeffects on the patterns of activities observed in aparticular country or industry. Also, activities tend to gotogether, so that studies that relate firms'performance to one international activity and ignore theothers may generate misleading conclusions. But the bundlingof activities seems to mainly reflect unobserved plantcharacteristics, such as managerial philosophy, contacts,product niche, and location. Once these are controlled for,there is little evidence that engaging in one internationalactivity increases the probability that a firm will engagein others in the future.