Industrial Policy

En este estudio se consideraron los productos priorizados en el Reporte de Complejidad Económica de Tabasco y se procedió a evaluar su potencial a partir de un conjunto de consideraciones de mercado. Luego, se agregó el potencial de cada producto en distintas colecciones de producto, y se seleccionó una industria cuya estimulación y desarrollo constituya una apuesta de desarrollo prometedora el estado. Respecto de éste se detallaron algunas estadísticas generales como una forma de evaluar su potencial de crecimiento e impacto para la economía local, estatal y nacional.

Para el objeto de este estudio, el sector industrial escogido para el análisis de cuellos de botella fue el de “Químicos” y, más puntualmente, los productos: “Agentes de limpieza orgánicos (ex. Jabón)”, “Aprestos y aceleradores de tintura”, “Mezclas de sustancias odoríferas”, “Placas fotográficas” y “Tinta”. El desarrollo de esta colección de productos representa una importante oportunidad, la que, a la fecha, los productores mexicanos no han podido aprovechar del todo. Sin embargo, estos productos han presentado un gran dinamismo dentro de México en los años recientes. Entre 2004 y 2014, las exportaciones de México en estos productos se han duplicado, el empleo en los sectores asociados a estos productos ha aumentado un 20%, y el salario promedio en estos sectores ha aumentado entre 40% y 50%.

En este estudio se consideraron los productos priorizados en el Reporte de Complejidad Económica de Campeche y se procedió a evaluar su potencial a partir de un conjunto de consideraciones de mercado. Luego, se agregó el potencial de cada producto en distintas colecciones de producto, y se seleccionó una industria cuya estimulación y desarrollo constituya una apuesta de desarrollo prometedora el estado. Respecto de éste se detallaron algunas estadísticas generales como una forma de evaluar su potencial de crecimiento e impacto para la economía local, estatal y nacional.

Para el objeto de este estudio, el sector industrial escogido para el análisis de cuellos de botella fue el de “Textiles” y, más puntualmente, los productos: “Abrigos para mujeres, de punto”, “Calzoncillos para hombres, de punto”, “Camisas para hombres, de punto”, “Camisas para mujeres”, “Camisas para mujeres, de punto” , “Las demás prendas de vestir, de punto”, “Suéteres (jerseys) y artículos similares, de punto”, “Sostenes y artículos similares”, “Trajes para hombres, de punto”, “Trajes para mujeres, de punto”, “Trajes y pantalones para hombres”, “Trajes y pantalones para mujeres” y “Trapos y cordajes textiles en desperdicios”. El desarrollo de esta colección de productos puede representar una oportunidad. Sin embargo, recientemente las exportaciones de estos productos por parte de México han venido perdiendo espacios en el mercado global, siendo el valor de las exportaciones mexicanas de estos productos en la actualidad menos de la mitad de lo que era en 2004.

En este estudio se consideraron los productos priorizados en el Reporte de Complejidad Económica de Baja California y se procedió a evaluar su potencial a partir de un conjunto de consideraciones de mercado. Luego, se agregó el potencial de cada producto en distintas colecciones de producto, y se seleccionó una industria cuya estimulación y desarrollo constituya una apuesta de desarrollo prometedora el estado. Respecto de éste se detallaron algunas estadísticas generales como una forma de evaluar su potencial de crecimiento e impacto para la economía local, estatal y nacional.

Para el objeto de este estudio, el sector industrial escogido para el análisis de cuellos de botella fue el de “Maquinaria industrial, herramientas y equipo” y puntualmente los productos: “Arboles de transmisión”, “Aparatos para soldar”, “Artículos de grifería para tuberías, calderas, etc.”, “Aparatos para regulación automáticos”, “Bombas para líquidos”, “Calderas para calefacción central” “Contadores de gas, líquido o electricidad”, “Densímetros, termómetros, etc.”, “Lavadoras de ropa”, “Los demás contadores”, “Máquinas de cosechar o trillas”, “Máquinas herramienta para trabajar madera”, “Máquinas para fabricar elementos impresores”, “Máquinas y aparatos para soldar”, “Máquinas y aparatos para trabajar caucho o plástico”, “Máquinas para el procesamiento de tela”, “Partes para máquinas para trabajar maderas o metales” y “Útiles intercambiables para herramientas de mano”. El desarrollo de esta colección de productos presenta oportunidades muy atractivas tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. Más aún, la producción de estos productos ha exhibido un importante dinamismo en el país durante los últimos años. Las exportaciones mexicanas de estos productos han aumentado en valor un 175% durante en el período 2004-2014. Asimismo, el empleo en las industrias asociadas al desarrollo de estos productos ha aumentado más de 35%.

This note collects evidence related to possible constraints to economic growth, and their relation with GoSL’s industrial zone development agenda. We find that new zones are especially well-suited to help address Sri Lanka’s lack of industrial land and high policy uncertainty, both of which may be holding back growth. Less clear, however, are zones’ impact on Sri Lanka’s limited transport links beyond the Western Province. Finally, partnering with well-connected zone management companies may also help create opportunities to connect with firms in new, non-traditional sectors.

At a time of slow growth in several advanced and emerging countries, calls for more structural reforms are multiplying. However, estimations of the short- and medium-term impact of these reforms on GDP growth remain methodologically problematic and still highly controversial. We contribute to this literature by making a novel use of the non-parametric Synthetic Control Method to estimate the impact of 23 wide-reaching structural reform packages (including both real and financial sector measures) rolled out in 22 countries between 1961 and 2000. Our results suggest that, on average, reforms started having a significant positive effect on GDP per capita only after five years. Ten years after the beginning of a reform wave, GDP per capita was roughly 6 percentage points higher than the synthetic counterfactual scenario. However, average point estimates mask a large heterogeneity of outcomes. Benefits tended to materialise earlier, but overall to be more limited, in advanced economies than in emerging markets. These results are confirmed when we use a parametric dynamic panel fixed effect model to control for the rich dynamics of GDP, and are robust to a variety of alternative specifications, placebo and falsification tests, and to different indicators of reform. 

Special Economic Zones (SEZ) have played an important role in Panama's successful growth story over the previous decade. SEZ have attracted local and foreign investment by leveraging a business-friendly environment of low transaction costs, and created many stable, well-paid jobs for Panamanians. Beyond that, SEZ shall be assessed as place-based policy by their capacity to boost structural transformations, namely attracting new skills and more complex know-how not to be found in the domestic economy.

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the three largest SEZ in Panama:

• Colon Free Zone
• Panama-Pacific
• City of Knowledge

Our results suggest that SEZ have been successful as measured by static indicators, such as foreign investment, job creation and productivity. We also find that SEZ have boosted inflows of high-skill immigrants, who are most likely generating positive knowledge spillovers on Panamanians productivity and wages. However, significant legal instruments and institutional designs are preventing Panama from taking full advantage of the skill variety hosted at the SEZ. Complex immigration processes inhibiting foreigners from transitioning out of the SEZ, a long list of restricted professions and even citizenships considered as a national security concern, are hindering the flow of knowledge, keeping the benefits coming from more complex multinational companies locked inside the gates of SEZ.

After an era of generic support for economic development and innovation, narrowly targeted transformation policy is back on the table. Recent advances in the fields of new industrial policy and transition thinking converge on the idea that achieving structural change requires governments to take an active role in overcoming inertia. Rather than just leveraging R&D investments and setting framework conditions, policy makers are urged to participate in the development of socio-economic systems around particular technologies. Associated policy support typically involves a diverse portfolio of system-specific interventions.

The emergence of transformative policy, in this paper characterized by being selective, process-oriented and multi-instrumental, poses severe challenges to rising standards of public accountability. Evaluation methods for calculating the ‘bang for the buck’ of R&D-leveraging measures are ill-suited when policy mixes are supposed to enact economic transformation. We argue that, in order to see if aptly chosen policy design is bringing about actual change, assessments should gauge policy contributions to building up technological innovation systems (TIS). The TIS-literature provides a concrete but untapped basis for tracking how policy efforts affect conditions favoring the creation and diffusion of new economic activities. This premise leads us to introduce a scheme for structuring analyses concerned with (the links between) the organization, orientation and aggregate impact of transformative policy. We test it in a tentative assessment of the Dutch ‘Topsector approach’.

Besides facilitating continuous policy learning, our assessment scheme also serves to strengthen policy maker’s ability to legitimize the adoption of heterodox economic approaches.

Venezuela is an oil-dependent economy subject to large exogenous shocks, with a rigid labor market. These features go straight at the heart of two weaknesses of real business cycle (RBC) theory widely reported in the literature: Neither shocks are volatile enough nor real salaries are sufficiently flexible as required by the RBC framework to replicate the behavior of the economy. We calibrate a basic RBC model and compare a set of relevant statistics from RBC-simulated time series with actual data for Venezuela and the benchmark case of the United States (1950-2008). In spite of Venezuela being one of the most heavily intervened economies in the world, RBC-simulated series provide a surprisingly good fit when it comes to the non-oil sector of the economy, and in particular for labor markets. Large restrictions on dismissal and widespread minimum (nominal) wage put all the burden of adjustment on prices; which translate into highly volatile real wages.

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of wage inequality in Colombia by cities and industries and attempts to evaluate the impact of the inequality of industries on inequality of cities. Using the 2010-2014 Colombian Social Security data, we calculate the gini coefficient for cities and industries and draw comparisons between their distributions. Our results show that while cities are unequal in similar ways, industries differ widely on how unequal they can be with ginis. Moreover, industrial structure plays a significant role to determine city inequality. Industrial framework proves to be a key element in this area for researches and policymakers.

Income per capita in Uganda has doubled in the last 20 years. This remarkable performance has been buoyed by significant aid flows and large external imbalances. Economic growth has been concentrated in non-tradable activities leading to growing external imbalances and a growing gap between rural and urban incomes. Future growth will depend on achieving sufficient export dynamism. In addition, growth faces a number of other challenges: low urbanization rate, rapid rural population growth and high dependency ratios. However, both the dependency ratio and fertility rates have begun to decline recently. Rural areas are also severely overcrowded with low-productivity subsistence agriculture as a pervasive form of production. Commercial agriculture has great possibilities to increase output, but as the sector improves its access to capital, inputs and technology it will shed jobs rather than create them.

These challenges combined tell us that future growth in Uganda will require a rapid rate of export growth and economic diversification. The country faces the prospect of an oil boom of uncertain size and timing. It could represent an important stepping stone to achieve external sustainability, expanded income and infrastructure and a greater internal market. However, as with all oil booms, the challenges include avoiding the Dutch disease, managing the inevitable volatility in oil incomes and avoiding inefficient specialization in oil. Policies that set targets for the non-oil deficit could help manage some of these effects, but a conscious strategy to diversify would still be needed.

The best strategy is therefore to use the additional oil revenue and accompanying investments to promote a diversification strategy that is sustainable. To determine how to encourage such a transformation, we draw on a new line of research that demonstrates how development seldom implies producing more of the same. Instead, as countries grow, they tend to move into new industries, while they also increase productivity in existing sectors. In this report, we analyze what those new industries might be for Uganda.

To do so, we first look to those products which balance the desire to increase the diversification and complexity of production, while not over-stretching existing capabilities. These include mostly agricultural inputs, such as agrochemicals and food processing. In addition, Uganda should concurrently develop more complex industries, such as construction materials, that are reasonably within reach of current capabilities and will be in great demand in the context of an oil boom. Here, the fact that Uganda is landlocked and faces high import costs will provide natural protection to the expanding demand in Uganda and neighboring countries. We conclude with a discussion of the government policies that will support Uganda in developing new tradable industries.