TY - CHAP A1 - Iacovone, Leonardo A1 - Brown, J David A1 - Crespi, Gustavo A A1 - Marcolin, Luca T1 - Productivity Convergence at the Firm Level: New Evidence from the Americas T2 - Understanding the Income and Efficiency Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean N2 - Uses firm-level data from the manufacturing sector in Colombia, Mexico, and the United States, in the past decade, to investigate the extent to which aggregate productivity growth in the manufacturing sector is driven by growth in productivity at the firm level or by reallocation of employment shares across firms. The evaluation produced results that stress a focus on firm-level productivity growth, as this has contributed the most to overall productivity growth. Reallocation between firms, within sectors, results in a weak force of productivity growth, and reallocation between sectors an even weaker source of growth. Although firms converge toward the domestic frontier with spillovers arising from the growth of the domestic frontier, no convergence occurs with respect to the global frontier. For all countries analyzed, the most important determinant of productivity convergence at the firm level remains innovation effort, measured as the firm-level expenditure shares in innovation and investment in capital equipment. Y1 - 2016 SN - 978-1-4648-0450-2 SN - 978-1-4648-0451-9 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0450-2_ch5 SP - 117 EP - 186 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Iacovone, Leonardo A1 - Crespi, Gustavo A1 - Bowen, J David A1 - Marcolin, Luca T1 - Decomposing firm-level productivity growth and assessing its determinants: evidence from the Americas JF - The Journal of Technology Transfer N2 - This paper provides novel empirical evidence on productivity growth in the manufacturing sector in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru. Relying on plant-level data, we first decompose productivity and productivity growth into plant-level growth and market allocation forces. While the average productivity of the survivors is higher than the overall contribution of reallocation forces, during recessions the inverse is true and reallocation gives a positive, albeit small, contribution to aggregate productivity growth. Next we analyze how policy measures can determine allocative efficiency levels and growth, and find important scope for action on education, financial regulation, and structural reforms. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10961-018-9678-0 VL - 43 IS - 6 SP - 1571 EP - 1606 ER -