The role of allocative efficiency in a decade of recovery

Abstract

The Chilean economy experienced a decade of sustained growth in aggregate output and productivity after the 1982 nancial crisis. This paper analyzes the role of allocative e¢ ciency on total factor productivity (TFP) in the manufacturing sector by applying the methodology of Hsieh and Klenow (2009) to establishment data from the Chilean manu- facturing census. We nd that a reduction in resource misallocation accounts for about 40 percent of the growth in manufacturing TFP between 1983 and 1996. In particular, a reduc- tion in the least productive plants implicit output subsidies is the primary reason for the reduction in resource misallocation during this period. Moreover, these plants enjoyed above industry-average growth in physical productivity, contributing to the overall improvement in e¢ cient TFP after the nancial crisis. Our evidence suggests that Chile s banking reform during the early and mid-1980s is likely to have played an important role in the observed improvement in allocative e¢ ciency.