Market Access and the Evolution of within Plant Productivity in Chile

Abstract

This paper studies the impact of trade reforms on the evolution of plant's productivity in Chile (1979-2000). The main contribution of the paper is to construct detailed measures of trade liberalization disentangling the impact of export and import oriented policies. We find evidence of a positive impact of export oriented policies on productivity of traded sectors relative to non traded. On the other hand, the reduction of import barriers might have a positive impact on productivity in export oriented sectors, but it hurts local firms in import competing ones probably due to the existence of increasing returns.firm heterogeneity, trade reforms, productivity gains, plant’s panel data