In this paper I analyze the productivity gains from trade liberalization in the Belgian textile industry. So far, empirical research has established a strong relationship between opening up to trade and productivity, relying almost entirely on deflated sales to proxy for output in the production function. The latter implies that the resulting productivity estimates still capture price and demand shocks which are most likely to be correlated with the change in the operating environment, which invalidate the evaluation of the welfare implications. In order to get at the true productivity gains I propose a simple methodology to estimate a production function controlling for unobserved prices by introducing an explicit demand system. I combine a unique data set containing matched plant-level and product-level information with detailed product-level quota protection information to recover estimates for productivity as well as parameters of the demand side (markups). I find that when correcting for unobserved prices and demand shocks, the estimated productivity gains from relaxing protection are only half (from 8 to only 4 percent) of those obtained with standard techniques.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
13155.
Length: Date of creation: Jun 2007 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13155
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Find related papers by JEL classification: F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
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Massimo Del Gatto & Adriana Di Liberto & C. Petraglia, 2008.
"Measuring Productivity,"
Working Paper CRENoS
200818, Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia.
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