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Zonder onderwerpscode: economie

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This paper examines the extent to which the destination of exports matters for the input prices paid by firms, using detailed customs and firm-product-level data from Portugal. We use exchange-rate movements as a source of variation in export destinations and find that exporting to richer countries leads firms to charge more for outputs and pay higher prices for inputs, other things equal. The results are supportive of the hypothesis that an exogenous increase in average destination income leads firms to raise the average quality of goods they produce and to purchase higher-quality inputs.

Zonder onderwerpscode: economie

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In principle, firms in developing countries benefit from the fact that advanced technologies and products have already been developed in industrialized countries and can simply be adopted, a process often referred to as industrial upgrading. But for many firms this advantage remains elusive. What is getting in the way? This paper reviews recent firm-level empirical research on the determinants of upgrading in developing countries. The first part focuses on how to define and measure various dimensions of upgrading --- learning, quality upgrading, technology adoption, and product innovation. The second part takes stock of recent micro-empirical evidence on the drivers of upgrading, classifying them as output-side drivers, input-side drivers, or drivers of know-how. The review concludes with some thoughts about promising directions for research in the area.

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This paper examines how schools choose class size and how households sort in response to those choices. Focusing on the highly liberalized Chilean education market, we develop a model in which schools are heterogeneous in an underlying productivity parameter, class size is a component of school quality, households are heterogeneous in income and hence willingness to pay for school quality, and schools are subject to a class-size cap. The model offers an explanation for two distinct empirical patterns observed among private schools that accept government vouchers: (i) There is an inverted-U relationship between class size and household income in equilibrium, which will tend to bias cross-sectional estimates of the effect of class size on student performance. (ii) Some schools at the class size cap adjust prices (or enrollments) to avoid adding another classroom, which produces stacking at enrollments that are multiples of the class size cap. This generates discontinuities in the relationship between enrollment and household characteristics at those points, violating the assumptions underlying regression-discontinuity (RD) research designs. This result suggests that caution is warranted in applying the RD approach in settings in which parents have substantial school choice and schools are free to set prices and influence their enrollments.