Centre De Referència En Economia Analítica Barcelona Economics Working Paper Series the Effects of Structural Reforms on Productivity and Profitability Enhancing Reallocation: Evidence from Colombia the Effects of Structural Reforms on Productivity and Profitability Enhancing Reallocation: Evidence

Estimates for the U.S. suggest that at least in some sectors productivity enhancing reallocation is the dominant factor in accounting for pro-ducitivity growth. An open question, particularly relevant for developing countries, is whether reallocation is always productivity enhancing. It may be that imperfect competition or other barriers to competitive environments imply that the reallocation process is not fully efficient in these countries. Using a unique plant-level longitudinal dataset for Colom-bia for the period 1982-1998, we explore these issues by examining the interaction between market allocation, and productivity and profitability. Moreover, given the important trade, labor and financial market reforms in Colombia during the early 1990's, we explore whether and how the contribution of reallocation changed over the period of study. Our data permit measurement of plant-level quantities and prices. Taking advantage of the rich structure of our price data, we propose a sequential mehodology to estimate productivity and demand shocks at the plant level. First, we estimate total factor productivity (TFP) with plant-level physical output data, where we use downstream demand to instrument inputs. We then turn to estimating demand shocks and markups with * We thank Alberto Serrano, Juan Manuel Contreras and Pablo Medina for excellent research assistance, Alvaro Suárez and José Eduardo Granados at DANE for providing access to data, the staff in charge of the AMS for answering our queries on methodological issues regarding the data, and participants at various seminars at DANE for their comments and suggestions. 1 Barcelona Economics WP nº 134 plant-level price data, using TFP to instrument for output in the inverse-demand equation. We examine the evolution of the distributions of TFP and demand shocks in response to the market reforms in the 1990's. We find that market reforms are associated with rising overall productivity that is largely driven by reallocation away from low-and towards high-productivity businesses. In addition, we find that the allocation of activity across businesses is less driven by demand factors after reforms. We find that the increase in aggregate productivity post-reform is entirely accounted for by the improved allocation of activity.

对美国的估计表明，至少在某些部门，提高生产率的资源再配置是解释生产率增长的主要因素。一个悬而未决的问题是，资源再配置是否总是能提高生产率，这对发展中国家尤其相关。可能是不完全竞争或竞争环境的其他障碍意味着这些国家的资源再配置过程并非完全有效。利用1982 - 1998年期间哥伦比亚独一无二的工厂层面纵向数据集，我们通过考察市场配置与生产率和盈利能力之间的相互作用来探讨这些问题。此外，鉴于20世纪90年代初哥伦比亚进行了重要的贸易、劳动力和金融市场改革，我们探究在研究期间资源再配置的贡献是否以及如何发生了变化。我们的数据允许对工厂层面的数量和价格进行测量。利用我们丰富的价格数据结构，我们提出了一种顺序方法来估计工厂层面的生产率和需求冲击。首先，我们利用工厂层面的实物产出数据估计全要素生产率（TFP），其中我们使用下游需求作为投入的工具变量。然后我们转向利用工厂层面的价格数据估计需求冲击和加价，在逆需求方程中使用TFP作为产出的工具变量。我们考察了20世纪90年代市场改革后TFP和需求冲击分布的演变。我们发现市场改革与总体生产率的提高相关，这在很大程度上是由从低生产率企业向高生产率企业的资源再配置所驱动。此外，我们发现改革后企业间的活动配置受需求因素的驱动较小。我们发现改革后总体生产率的提高完全是由活动配置的改善所导致的。