The Geographic and Sectoral Impact of Productivity

Federico Huneeus will discuss the geographic and sectoral impact of productivity changes and the local and aggregate impact of development policies, the growth of the lithium industry, and the closure of a major steel company.

Speaker: Federico Huneeus, Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Duke University, Senior Economist at the Central Bank of Chile

Paper Abstract: We study the geographic and sectoral impact of productivity changes in a model that includes production linkages throughout the supply chain, labor migration, international and domestic trade, congestion of fixed factors, firm entry and exit, and knowledge diffusion. To quantify these impacts, we construct, for the first time for Chile, input-output matrices disaggregated by geography and sector, consistent with national accounts, using administrative data and surveys. We use the model to study the local and aggregate impact of development policies, the growth of the lithium industry, and the closure of a major steel company. In addition to aggregate impacts, we identify winners and losers from these events.

This event is online only. Please register in advance. The Zoom session is open to the public.

Speaker Bio: Federico Huneeus is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Duke University. He is also a Senior Economist at the Central Bank of Chile. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale University Cowles Foundation. He has a PhD in economics from Princeton University. He is a trade economist who investigates issues related to firm behavior, from a micro and macro perspective, with a special focus on the study of production networks of firms, how they are formed, how they affect productivity growth and how they affect the impact of development policies. He also has a line of research on understanding equity-efficiency trade-offs.

The Growth Lab’s Research Seminar series is a weekly seminar that brings together researchers from across the academic spectrum who share an interest in growth and development.