•The twentieth century displays changing patterns of income growth volatility.•The distribution of income growth rates is persistently asymmetry and fat-tailed.•There is a negative scale relation ...between growth volatility and GDP per capita after the 1950s.•The scale relation is not significant during most of the first half of the twentieth century.•The evidence highlights the complex evolution of the growth process.
This paper analyses the international distribution of GDP per capita growth rates and its dynamics during the twentieth century. We show that the century is characterized by a changing distribution of GDP per capita growth rates, which is reflected in different shapes and a persistent asymmetry at the regional level and for countries of different development levels. Interestingly, the well-known negative scaling relation between growth volatility and country size that characterizes the second half of the century is not observed before the 1950s, period dominated by severe global shocks. We discuss possible explanations to the disruption of the scaling relationship. We argue that in a turbulent context, the functioning and interdependence of economic components of countries of different size can be altered, also affecting the scaling relation between growth volatility and country size. Our results contribute with evidence of the underlying complexity of the growth process and its historical evolution.
El trabajo analiza los cambios ocurridos recientemente en la forma de organización del agro argentino, teniendo presente el rol que jugará frente al desafío del desarrollo —aún pendiente en el país—. ...En él se plantea que actualmente conviven dos modelos de organización productiva. Uno en declinación, basado en una elevada integración vertical de las actividades con poca subcontratación, donde el agricultor es el epicentro del proceso de toma de decisiones; el otro, ascendente, centrado en una densa red de agentes aunados por una multiplicidad de contratos, en el cual se reparten riesgos y se incrementa la interdependencia en la toma de decisiones. En el nuevo modelo —que explica alrededor de 2/3 de la producción agrícola—, se separa la propiedad de la tierra (los terratenientes) de quienes desarrollan las actividades (las empresas de producción), a la vez que se subcontrata parte sustantiva de las operaciones. Esto convalida la fuerte presencia de contratistas y proveedores de insumos como agentes económicos de la red productiva. La nueva forma de organización de "la producción biológica controlada": i) desdibuja las fronteras entre "lo primario", industria y servicios; ii) amplía el conjunto de agentes económicos involucrados en la producción; iii) rebalancea el poder en los procesos de generación y captación de rentas; iv) redistribuye el riesgo; y v) aumenta la vinculación de la actividad con el resto de la economía. Adicionalmente, replantea el sentido y la instrumentación de futuras estrategias-país de inserción externas en pos de captar mayores rentas internacionales y aplicarlas al proceso de desarrollo interno. /// Recent changes have shacked the traditional way agricultural production in Argentina has been organized. This paper focuses on analyzing them, following a developmental concern regarding the role that the agriculture sector can play. In the paper it is argued that two kinds of production organization models are currently coexisting in the agriculture sector in Argentina. One of them, in steady decline, is the traditional one characterized by a strong vertical integration of the economic activities and in which the farmer is central in the decision making process. The other one, increasing its participation, is network-based in which contracts play a key role in sustaining network relations. The network configuration of the emergent model enables both a greater risk diversification and a less centralized, and more interdependent, decision making process than the traditional one. In addition, the 'new' model, which currently represents two thirds of the total agriculture production, is further characterized by the separation between the agents that owned the land (the land owners) and the ones that perform the economic activity itself (the production firms). At the same time, a significant portion of the activities are subcontracted. Therefore, in the new model subcontractors and suppliers have a strong presence and visibility as nodes of the production network. The new way the 'controlled biologic production' is organized entails that: i) the boundaries between primary activities, industry and services tend to diffuse, ii) the amount of economic agents involved in production increases, iii) power in the rent-generating and rent-capturing processes is rebalanced, iv) risks are redistributed and v) the links between this activity and the rest of the economy get stronger. In addition, this new model leads to a redefinition of the orientation and implementation of the externally oriented strategies that aim to capture higher international rents to use in the local developmental process.
In this paper, we analyze whether the recent global process of strengthening and harmonization of intellectual property rights (IPRs) affects decisions of cross-border mergers and acquisitions ...(M&As). We investigate if IPRs have a differential effect across sectors of different technology content and for countries of different development level. Also, we study how imitation abilities of target countries interact with the tightening of IPRs. Using data for the post-TRIPS period (1995-2010), we estimate an extended gravity model to study the bilateral number of M&As, including a measure of the strength of IPRs systems on target countries and a set of control variables usually considered as determinants of M&As. The estimation results verify the gravity structure for M&As and show that IPRs -and enforcement- influence decisions of cross-border M&As in all sectors regardless of their technological content. However, IPRs are more important in countries with high imitation abilities and in sectors of high-technology content. Furthermore, a strengthening of IPRs leads to a larger increase of M&As in developing countries than in developed countries. These results call the attention on the possible implications for least developed economies and challenge the adequacy of a globally harmonized IPRs systems.
Este artículo tiene como objetivo explorar el comportamiento de las patentes de residentes y no residentes durante 1980 y 2010. En particular, se analiza cómo este comportamiento podría estar ...relacionado con el fortalecimiento de la legislación de propiedad intelectual y con el proceso de apertura económica y desindustrialización. La evidencia sugiere que el fortalecimiento de los derechos de propiedad intelectual -DPI- no ha incentivado la innovación local, sino que sólo ha impulsado las solicitudes de patentes de no residentes, en unos pocos campos tecnológicos y por parte de unas pocas empresas multinacionales. En cambio, las empresas nacionales recurren al uso de mecanismos alternativos de propiedad intelectual como los acuerdos de confidencialidad y el secreto industrial para gestionar su conocimiento. Este mecanismo les permite apropiarse de las rentas asociadas a sus esfuerzos en actividades de innovación, caracterizadas por la imitación y adaptación de tecnologías extranjeras. Esta evidencia permite discutir la política de fortalecimiento de los DPI y el estímulo de las patentes de invención como mecanismo para incentivar la innovación en Colombia.
Los derechos de propiedad intelectual (DPI) y las patentes como mecanismos de impulso a la innovación han cobrado especial relevancia y debate en el contexto colombiano. Este artículo tiene como ...objetivo explorar el comportamiento de las patentes de residentes y no residentes para el período 1980-2010. En particular analiza cómo este comportamiento podría estar relacionado con el fortalecimiento de la legislación de propiedad intelectual y con el proceso de apertura económica y desindustrialización. La evidencia sugiere que el fortalecimiento de los DPI no ha incentivado la innovación local, sino que sólo ha impulsado las solicitudes de patentes de no residentes en unos pocos campos tecnológicos y por parte de unas pocas empresas multinacionales. En cambio, las empresas nacionales recurren al uso de mecanismos alternativos de propiedad intelectual como los acuerdos de confidencialidad y el secreto industrial para gestionar su conocimiento y apropiarse de las rentas asociadas a sus esfuerzos en actividades de innovación que se caracterizan por formas de innovar basadas en la imitación y adaptación de tecnologías extranjeras. Esta evidencia permite discutir la política de fortalecimiento de los DPI y el estímulo de las patentes de invención como mecanismo para incentivar la innovación en Colombia.
We propose a novel measure to investigate firms' product specialisation: product coreness, that captures the centrality of exported products within the firm's export basket. We study product coreness ...using firm-product level data between 2018 and 2020 for Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Three main findings emerge from our analysis. First, the composition of firms' export baskets changes relatively little from one year to the other, and products far from the firm's core competencies, with low coreness, are more likely to be dropped. Second, higher coreness is associated with larger export flows at the firm level. Third, such firm-level patterns also have implications at the aggregate level: products that are, on average, exported with higher coreness have higher export flows at the country level, which holds across all levels of product complexity. Therefore, the paper shows that how closely a product fits within a firm's capabilities is important for economic performance at both the firm and country level. We explore these issues within an econometric framework, finding robust evidence both across our three countries and for each country separately.
The twentieth century was a period of outstanding economic growth together with an unequal income distribution. This paper analyses the international distribution of growth rates and its dynamics ...during the twentieth century. We show that the whole century is characterized by a high heterogeneity in the distribution of GDP per capita growth rates, which is reflected in different shapes and a persistent asymmetry of the distributions at the regional level and for countries of different development levels. We find that in the context of the global conflicts that characterized the first half of the twentieth century and involved mainly large economies, the well-known negative scale relation between volatility and size of countries is not significant. After the year 1956, a redistribution of volatility leads to a significant negative scale-relation, which has been recently considered as a robust feature of the evolution of economic organizations. Our results contribute with more empirical facts that call the attention to traditional macroeconomic theories to better explain the underlying complexity of the growth process and sheds light on its historical evolution.
We analyze mobility changes following the implementation of containment
measures aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19 in Bogot\'a, Colombia. We
characterize the mobility network before and ...during the pandemic and analyze
its evolution and changes between January and July 2020. We then link the
observed mobility changes to socioeconomic conditions, estimating a gravity
model to assess the effect of socioeconomic conditions on mobility flows. We
observe an overall reduction in mobility trends, but the overall connectivity
between different areas of the city remains after the lockdown, reflecting the
mobility network's resilience. We find that the responses to lockdown policies
depend on socioeconomic conditions. Before the pandemic, the population with
better socioeconomic conditions shows higher mobility flows. Since the
lockdown, mobility presents a general decrease, but the population with worse
socioeconomic conditions shows lower decreases in mobility flows. We conclude
deriving policy implications.
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