Input quality and skills are complementary and increase output quality: Causal evidence from Ecuador's trade liberalization

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bas, Maria; Paunov, Caroline
• 署名单位: heSam Universite; Universite Pantheon-Sorbonne; Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2021.102668
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Foreign input quality; Input-skill complementarity; Skill intensity and skill premium; Output product quality; Input tariff reductions; Firm-product-level data; Ecuador

摘要

This paper tests for the production complementarity between firms' access to high-quality intermediate inputs and their skill composition and their joint impact on output quality. Using census data at firm-product level for Ecuador for 1997-2007, we exploit exogenous tariff changes at Ecuador's entry to the World Trade Organization to show that input tariff cuts allow firms to upgrade their input quality. Next, we demonstrate by means of within-firm instrumental variable estimations that firms' choices of imported input quality drive their relative demand for skilled labor and the skill premium. Imported input quality and firms' skill-composition jointly boost firms' output quality. Moreover, we show that firms that source domestic inputs produced by industries that import high-quality inputs also upgrade their skills and output quality. Our findings are not driven by our measures of quality, foreign demand shocks (export opportunities), Ecuador's financial crisis, real exchange rate variations, financial liberalization and other industry-level reforms.