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on Central and South America |
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Issue of 2007‒01‒28
four papers chosen by |
| By: | Goedhuys, Micheline (UNU-MERIT and University of Antwerpen) |
| Abstract: | Using micro data from Brazilian manufacturing firms, this paper investigates the impact of a wide set of innovation activities on firms' total factor productivity (TFP) and its subsequent effect on firm growth, measured by sales. Controlling for size and age of the firms, productivity levels and productivity growth of firms over time are found to be key drivers of firm size adjustments. The activities leading to higher productivity levels are organizational change, cooperation with clients, human capital development, ICT usage, product innovation and learning by exporting, with an R&D effect only in the long run. Though the intensity with which firms engage in these innovation activities is sector dependent, innovation activities are in all sectors important for explaining sales growth differences, also in the more traditional sectors in which Brazilian firms have a competitive advantage. |
| Keywords: | Technological Change, Research and Development, Innovation, Productivity, Manufacturing Industry, Total Factor Productivity, Brazil |
| JEL: | O12 D24 |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:unumer:2007002&r=lam |
| By: | Facundo Alvaredo |
| Abstract: | This paper presents series on top shares of income in Argentina from 1932 to 2004 based on personal income tax return statistics. Our results suggest that income concentration was higher during the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s than it is today. The recovery of the economy after the Great Depression, favored by the international trade conditions during and after the Second World War, and the visible effects of the peronist policy between 1945 and 1955 generated an inverted U shape in the dynamics of top shares. The peronist redistributive policy, successful and visible, seemed to have proved limited when compared with the central economies. Since then, and after a new upward movement between 1955 and 1959, the top shares seem to have described the U-shape pattern found in the developed English-speaking economies. The levels of concentration in 1953 were very similar to those found in 1997. |
| Date: | 2007 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pse:psecon:2007-02&r=lam |
| By: | Lopez Gonzalez, Mauricio; Mesa Callejas, Ramon Javier |
| Abstract: | [Abstract in English is missing] |
| Keywords: | crecimiento económico; regimen cambiario; déficit fiscal; remesas; ahorro |
| JEL: | E23 E40 |
| Date: | 2006–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1507&r=lam |
| By: | Salardi, Paola |
| Abstract: | This paper presents empirical findings by applying the reformulation of the FGT class of poverty measures provided by Bottiroli-Civardi and Chiappero-Martinetti (2004) to the Brazilian annual households survey, the Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra do Domicilios (PNAD) for 2002. Starting from a set of geographically-specific poverty lines, we compute poverty between and within these differentiated homogenous groups running two different exercises. First, we consider the whole Brazil and we find the between component is dominant due to the high heterogeneity of this set of poverty lines. Then, by considering separately each region, we find a dominance of the within component in the North and in the Central-West, while the between component is dominant in the remaining regions. These findings renew the importance of having a critical eye in interpreting synthetic indexes of poverty. |
| JEL: | I32 |
| Date: | 2006–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:1509&r=lam |