Productivity and Firm Heterogeneity in Chile

Abstract

Measuring firm-level productivity and innovation in Latin America is not something new. More than 30 years have already gone by since the first studies looking at plant-level patterns of technological accumulation were carried out. The first, and perhaps most influential, programme of research in this area in the region was the collection of studies initiated by Jorge Katz and colleagues in 1975, which continued until 1982. As pointed out by Bell (2006), “this programme generated a wealth of empirical material and theoretical insight about the emergence of localised technological creativity in industrialising economies”. In other words, through a series of very deep interviews and case studies Katz and colleagues shifted attention from simply looking at the determinants and impacts of technology transfer from the North towards the analysis of the factors underlying the creation of local absorptive capacities (and this was done well before this concept was popularized). The amount of learning and empirical evidence collected during these early studies set the frame to systematically start collecting information about productivity and innovation in Latin America. Recent times have seen an exponential growth of analyses on innovation and productivity at the firm level (see, for example, Crespi, 2006; De Negri, 2006 and Iacovone, 2009). This is partially due to an improvement in data collection on business sector performance (see, for example, the several waves of innovation surveys already available in the region) and to the release and availability of census data.