The empirical evidence on whether participation in export markets increases plantlevel productivity has been inconclusive so far. We explain this inconclusiveness by drawing on Arrow's (1962) characterization of learning-by-doing, which suggests focusing on young plants and using measures of export experience rather than export participation. We find strong evidence of learning-by-exporting for young Colombian manufacturing plants between 1981 and 1991: total factor productivity increases 4%-5% for each additional year a plant has exported, after controlling for the effect of current exports on total factor productivity. Learning-byexporting is more important for young than for old plants and in industries that deliver a larger percentage of their exports to high-income countries.

Using a large panel of Colombian manufacturing plants, this paper finds that exporters are significantly larger, more capital intensive, have higher labour productivity, and pay higher wages than nonexporters three years before exporting for the first time. The differential in performance increases in the years leading to entry in the export market. After entry, sales, employment, and the proportion of skilled workers in the labour force keep growing significantly faster for exporters, but the growth of labour productivity and capital intensity is indistinguishable for exporters and nonexporters.Exporters, Labour Productivity, Wages, Export Market, Non-Exporters, Manufacturing, Colombia,

Abstract:We investigate whether exposure to export markets improves plant productivity.Our estimation framework adds export experience as an additional state variable and a fixed cost of entry into export markets to Olley and Pakes's (1996) behavioral model. We find robust evidence of a positive effect of export experience on productivity, controlling for the bias caused by self-selection of the most productive plants into exporting. The effect is stronger for plants with the most exposure to exporting, and statistically insignificant for exporters that stop exporting. Our analysis also suggests that matching methods may produce upwardly biased estimates of learning-by-exporting effects.

This article emphasises the role of locational factors in the determination of rural non-farm (RNF) employment possibilities in rural Honduras. It finds that while RNF wage jobs are predominantly located close to urban areas, RNF self-employment jobs are geographically dispersed around the country, depending on local motors such as a profitable agricultural activity, an important road, or a tourist attraction. In all, the importance of RNF income for rural households (31.3 per cent of total income) suggests that the RNF sector should be considered when designing policies to improve the capabilities and livelihood of the rural Honduran.

We examine capital adjustment patterns using two large and largely novel plant-level data sets from the manufacturing sectors of Colombia and Mexico. The data suggest that irreversibilities play a more important role than in more-advanced economies. However, we do not find support for the presence of increasing returns in the adjustment cost technology, such as arising from fixed costs. Firms go through periods of inaction and rarely sell capital, but they do not invest at discrete times only. An examination of the dynamic patterns of adjustment of factors differing in their flexibility supports this interpretation. © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology