Technical Change, Market Structure and Intraindustry Trade Specialization: A Study of the Colombian Manufacturing Industry

This dissertation studies the structural trends and determinants of technical change for the Colombian manufacturing industry. It also analyzes the role of technical change in the trends of international specialization in manufactures. To this end, the dissertation has five related chapters. Chapter one analyzes the main features and historical factors that played a central role for the on process in Colombia during the twentieth century. Chapter two reviews the parametric and non-parametric methodologies to measure technical change. Chapter three uses a translog index to measure total factor productivity (TFP) growth across manufacturing sectors in Colombia for 1970--1995 period. The specific application takes into account the correction by improvements in quality of inputs, in which aggregate inputs follow a translog specification in each one of their components. Chapter four refines the basic TFP measurements, by relaxing the hypotheses of perfect competition and constant returns to scale. To this end, the TFP growth decomposition equation includes the markup and economies of scale parameters. We rely on parametric estimates of elasticity of scale based on translog production functions and non-constant demand elasticity functions for twenty-two aggregate manufacturing sectors. To complete the exercise, the basic Solows residual, the adjusted translog index, and the parametric estimates of primal rates of technical change are contrasted. The last section is devoted to the econometric analysis on the determinants of TFP based on a set of industry characteristics and innovation variables. Chapter five analyzes the theoretical and empirical relationship between intraindustry trade flows (IIT) in manufactures and technical change for the Colombian manufacturing industry during 1970--1995 period. A general estimating equation for sources of change of the equilibrium number of varieties, in which TFP growth is one of its components, is derived from the basic model of trade in differentiated good with monopolistic competition. The econometric set up follows a panel data and cross section estimations of a system of simultaneous equation models (SEM). TFP and IIT indices are the endogenous variables of the system meanwhile industry characteristic, trade policy, and innovation-activity variables form the set of exogenous instruments.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Pombo, Carlos

Contributors dc:contributor

• Baer, Werner W.

• Economics, General

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9944970

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/85654