ANA FERNANDES

Home Address:    42 Mansfield Street Apt. 3    New Haven CT 06511    Tel: (203) 562-1234 Office Address:   Department of Economics   Yale University   Box 208268   New Haven, CT 06520-8268   Fax: (203) 432-5779 Birth Date: January 27, 1973 Citizenship: Portuguese

Fields of Concentration

International Trade Development Economics Industrial Organization

Desired Teaching:

International Trade Development Economics Industrial Organization Applied Econometrics

Comprehensive Examinations Completed:

May 1999 (Orals) Economic Development, International Economics May 1998 (Written) Microeconomic and Macroeconomic Theory

Dissertation Title:

Dynamics of Industrial Productivity in Colombia: Trade Policy and Public Capital

Committee:

Professor Christopher Udry Professor Steve Berry Professor Philip Levy

Expected Completion Date:

Summer 2002

Degrees:

M. Phil., Economics, Yale University, May 2000 M.A., Economics, Yale University, May 1998 Licenciatura in Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal, 1995 Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Fall 1994 (exchange student)

Fellowships, Honors and Awards:

Doctoral Scholarship Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia, Portugal, 1997-2002 Yale University Graduate Fellowship, 1997-2001 European Union Erasmus Program Scholarship, 1994

Teaching Experience:

Teaching Assistant, International Trade Theory and Policy, Yale University, assigned for Spring 2001 Teaching Assistant, Statistics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Spring 1996, Spring 1997 Teaching Assistant, Calculus, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Fall 1996 Teaching Assistant, Decision Models, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Fall 1995

Papers:

"Trade Policy, Trade Volumes and Plant-Level Productivity in Colombian Manufacturing Industries," mimeo, Yale University, 2001 [job market paper]. "Savings Behavior in a Developing Country Context," mimeo, Yale University, 1999.

Conference Presentations:

Northeast Universities Development Consortium Conference (NEUDC), Boston University, 2001

Other Activities:

Co-organizer of the Inter-University Student Conference (Columbia U., New York U., Princeton U., U. Pennsylvania/Yale U.), 1999-present

Professional Affiliations:

American Economic Association

Languages:

English, Portuguese, French, Spanish

References:

Professor Christopher Udry Department of Economics Box 208269 New Haven CT 06520-8269 Tel: (203) 432-3637 Fax: (203) 432-6323 E-mail: udry@yale.edu Professor Steven Berry Department of Economics Box 208264 New Haven CT 06520-8264 Tel: (203) 432-3556 Fax: (203) 432-3898 E-mail: steveb@econ.yale.edu Professor Philip Levy Department of Economics Box 208269 New Haven CT 06520-8269 Tel: (203) 432-3638 Fax: (203) 432-6323 Email: philip.levy@yale.edu

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation provides new micro-level evidence on the effects of trade and infrastructure policies on Colombia's industrial sector. The first chapter in this dissertation offers some new insights on a central question in trade and development economics: does increased exposure to foreign competition generate gains in plant productivity? We find that it does. We examine Colombian trade policy from 1977 to 1991, a period during which trade liberalization alternates with increased trade protection in varied ways across industries, to investigate the link between trade policy and plant productivity. Using a rich panel of manufacturing plants, we obtain production function estimates separately across industries that are consistent in face of the simultaneity between input demands and productivity. A comparison of our consistent estimates to OLS estimates reveals the importance of the simultaneity bias. These estimates are used to derive plant-level time-varying productivity measures for which we identify a systematic component related to trade policy. We find a strong negative impact of lagged nominal tariffs on plant productivity controlling for observed and unobserved plant characteristics and for industry heterogeneity, at different disaggregation levels. We find that plant exit plays a minor role in generating productivity gains in the face of lower trade protection. Accounting for variation in the Colombian real exchange rate does not weaken our main results. The negative impact of trade protection on productivity is stronger for large plants than for small plants, as measured by employment and market shares. The negative impact of trade protection on productivity is stronger for plants in industries that are less competitive according to Herfindahl indexes and turnover rates. We check the robustness of our main findings using effective rates of protection and import penetration ratios as measures of trade protection and exposure. We find that the negative impact of trade protection and the positive impact of import penetration on productivity remain stronger for large plants and for plants in less competitive industries. Finally, we find evidence of a negative impact of trade protection on the rate of growth of plant productivity. It is not immediately obvious why protection should have this effect. The second chapter of the dissertation (in progress) is a theoretical investigation of alternative channels linking plant productivity gains to trade liberalization. We consider the ''X-efficiency'' argument that when trade protection reduces competition, it discourages managers' (or workers') efforts to cut costs and innovate. We also investigate conditions under which trade liberalization enhances plant productivity by increasing the availability of imported intermediate inputs of unobserved quality. Our analysis emphasizes heterogeneous productivity and uncertainty across plants, possibly generating differential responses to changes in trade policy. The third chapter of this dissertation (in progress) investigates location-specific externalities generated by the use of a common input across plants: regional infrastructure capital. Our objective is to find whether public capital contributes to productivity. The Colombian case is particularly interesting since the government's economic program during 1978-1982 was aimed at strengthening infrastructure to widen the domestic market. Our empirical approach obtains estimates for Cobb-Douglas and translog production functions including local public infrastructure as an external free input, correcting for the correlation between private input choices and productivity. The variation in infrastructure capital stocks across regions and over time is our source of identification. Infrastructure is measured by public capital stocks and subscriptions to the national electrical grid, normalized by region size. Regional agglomeration economies may generate a correlation between the productivity of plants benefiting from a common public capital stock. So, we consider a production function depending only on private inputs but allowing for a regional correlation structure across plant productivity residuals. Finally, we allow estimated infrastructure effects to operate through unobservable input prices. The different modelling strategies for infrastructure illustrate several aspects of its impact on output and productivity. The other objective of this chapter is to identify the magnitude of industry--regional-specific externalities in plant productivity, using measures of local industry inputs and output. Plant productivity levels are purged from the effects of infrastructure capital. To distinguish estimated agglomeration effects on productivity from the effects of unobserved fixed regional factors, changes in plant productivity levels are used.