IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/idb/wpaper/3254.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Emergence of New Successful Export Activities in Argentina: Self-Discovery, Knowledge Niches, or Barriers to Riches?

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel Sánchez
  • Ricardo Rozemberg
  • Inés Butler
  • Hernán Rufo

Abstract

This paper examines the emergence of three new successful export activities in Argentina: biotechnology applied to human health, blueberries and chocolate confections. The main interest lies in ascertaining why these sectors/products were targeted, on which previously accumulated capabilities they were built upon, and what type of hurdles they faced and how they were overcome. In the absence of government support for discovery, these new exports emerged because the pioneers could introduce permanent or dynamic barriers to entry to compensate for the knowledge externalities they generated. When they could only introduce temporary barriers to entry, laissez faire investment in experimentation was suboptimally small. These new exports emerged in sectors where there were entrepreneurs with superior planning and networking skills and/or there were larger firms that could self-provide the required public goods and solve coordination failures by themselves.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel Sánchez & Ricardo Rozemberg & Inés Butler & Hernán Rufo, 2008. "The Emergence of New Successful Export Activities in Argentina: Self-Discovery, Knowledge Niches, or Barriers to Riches?," Research Department Publications 3254, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    • Handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:3254
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.iadb.org/research/pub_hits.cfm?pub_id=R-548&pub_file_name=pubR-548.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric A. Verhoogen, 2008. "Trade, Quality Upgrading, and Wage Inequality in the Mexican Manufacturing Sector," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 489-530.
    2. Andrew B. Bernard & Jonathan Eaton & J. Bradford Jensen & Samuel Kortum, 2003. "Plants and Productivity in International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(4), pages 1268-1290, September.
    3. Sofronis K. Clerides & Saul Lach & James R. Tybout, 1998. "Is Learning by Exporting Important? Micro-Dynamic Evidence from Colombia, Mexico, and Morocco," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(3), pages 903-947.
    4. Ricardo Hausmann & Jason Hwang & Dani Rodrik, 2007. "What you export matters," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-25, March.
    5. C. A. Hidalgo & B. Klinger & A. -L. Barabasi & R. Hausmann, 2007. "The Product Space Conditions the Development of Nations," Papers 0708.2090, arXiv.org.
    6. Sanghamitra Das & Mark J. Roberts & James R. Tybout, 2007. "Market Entry Costs, Producer Heterogeneity, and Export Dynamics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(3), pages 837-873, May.
    7. Hausmann, Ricardo & Rodrik, Dani, 2003. "Economic development as self-discovery," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 603-633, December.
    8. William F. Maloney & Daniel Lederman, 2004. "R&D and Development," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 216, Econometric Society.
    9. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen, 2004. "Why Some Firms Export," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 561-569, May.
    10. Roberts, Mark J & Tybout, James R, 1997. "The Decision to Export in Colombia: An Empirical Model of Entry with Sunk Costs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 545-564, September.
    11. Stephen L. Parente & Edward C. Prescott, 2002. "Barriers to Riches," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262661306, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gianmarco Ottaviano & Christian Volpe Martincus, 2011. "SMEs in Argentina: who are the exporters?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 37(3), pages 341-361, October.
    2. Sánchez, Gabriel & Butler, Inés & Rozemberg, Ricardo, 2011. "Productive Development Policies in Argentina," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 3095, Inter-American Development Bank.
    3. Armando Castelar Pinneiro & Regis Bonelli, 2008. "New Export Activities in Brazil: Comparative Advantage, Policy or Self-Discovery?," Research Department Publications 3256, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.
    4. Armando Castelar Pinneiro & Regis Bonelli, 2008. "Nuevas Actividades Exportadoras en Brasil: Ventaja Comparativa, Políticas o Auto-Descubrimiento?," Research Department Publications 3257, Inter-American Development Bank, Research Department.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Armando Silva & Óscar Afonso & Ana Paula Africano, 2010. "Do Portuguese manufacturing firms self select to exports?," FEP Working Papers 371, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    2. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2012. "The Empirics of Firm Heterogeneity and International Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 4(1), pages 283-313, July.
    3. Aida Caldera, 2010. "Innovation and exporting: evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 146(4), pages 657-689, December.
    4. Zahler, Andrés, 2007. "Decomposing world export growth and the relevance of new destinations," MPRA Paper 30295, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Kichun Kang & Phyllis Keys & Yoon S. Shin, 2016. "Free Trade Agreements And Bridgehead Effect: Evidence From Korea–Chile Fta," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 61(05), pages 1-17, December.
    6. Maurice Kugler & Eric Verhoogen, 2012. "Prices, Plant Size, and Product Quality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 307-339.
    7. Elhanan Helpman, 2010. "Labor Market Frictions as a Source of Comparative Advantage, with Implications for Unemployment and Inequality," NBER Working Papers 15764, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Chen, Maggie Xiaoyang & Moore, Michael O., 2010. "Location decision of heterogeneous multinational firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 188-199, March.
    9. Elhanan Helpman, 2006. "Trade, FDI, and the Organization of Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 589-630, September.
    10. Ricardo A. López, 2009. "Do Firms Increase Productivity in Order to Become Exporters?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 71(5), pages 621-642, October.
    11. Fernandes, Ana P. & Tang, Heiwai, 2014. "Learning to export from neighbors," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 67-84.
    12. Jamal Ibrahim Haidar, 2022. "Internalization of externalities in international trade," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 63(1), pages 469-497, July.
    13. Davidson, Carl & Matusz, Steven J. & Shevchenko, Andrei, 2008. "Globalization and firm level adjustment with imperfect labor markets," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 295-309, July.
    14. Roberto Alvarez & Ricardo A. López, 2008. "Entry and Exit in International Markets: Evidence from Chilean Data," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 692-708, September.
    15. Paula Bustos, 2011. "Trade Liberalization, Exports, and Technology Upgrading: Evidence on the Impact of MERCOSUR on Argentinian Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(1), pages 304-340, February.
    16. Robert Johnson, 2008. "Trade and Prices with Heterogeneous Firms," 2008 Meeting Papers 244, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Irene Brambilla & Nicolas Depetris Chauvin & Guido Porto, 2015. "Wage and Employment Gains from Exports: Evidence from Developing Countries," Working Papers 2015-28, CEPII research center.
    18. Elhanan Helpman, 2010. "Labour Market Frictions as a Source of Comparative Advantage: Implications for Unemployment and Inequality," Chapters, in: Robert M. Solow & Jean-Philippe Touffut (ed.), The Shape of the Division of Labour, chapter 3, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Wagner, Rodrigo & Zahler, Andrés, 2015. "New exports from emerging markets: Do followers benefit from pioneers?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 203-223.
    20. Kasahara, Hiroyuki & Lapham, Beverly, 2013. "Productivity and the decision to import and export: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 297-316.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:idb:wpaper:3254. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Felipe Herrera Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iadbbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.