Imports, Productivity Growth, and Supply Chain Learning

By Garrick Blalock, Francisco M. Veloso. 2007

178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present evidence that importing is a source of international technology transfer. Using a detailed panel of Indonesian manufacturers, our analysis shows that firms in industries supplying increasingly import-intensive sectors have higher productivity growth than other firms. This finding suggests that linkages through vertical supply relationships are the channel through which import-driven technology transfer occurs. To our knowledge, these are the first firm-level results showing that downstream imports play a role in productivity gains. Together with the literature linking FDI and exporting to technology spillovers, the results provide a third component to the argument that trade and openness promote economic growth.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1b24abf20d1c368d785a7ec1dc2ad99e5e2d65e2

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In Economics and Econometrics

In Strategy and Management

M. Vivarelli

Citations in the corpus

Innovation, Employment and Skills in Advanced and Developing Countries: A Survey of the Literature (2011, background): “Other studies use firm level database to examine imports as a mechanism for technological transfer and find that imports can in fact improve firm technological capabilities (see for example, Blalock and Veloso, 2007).”
The Creation and Diffusion of Innovation in Developing Countries : A Systematic Literature Review (2016, unknown): “Thanks to a detailed panel of Indonesian manufacturers firms, Blalock and Veloso (2007) showed that firms in industries supplying importintensive sectors had higher productivity growth than other firms.”