El efecto relativo de las características individuales, cantonales y sectoriales en la heterogeneidad de la productividad total de los factores de las empresas de Ecuador en el año 2010

Abstract

Since the economic performance of regions is different within a country, it is expected that the heterogeneity of firms is not only given by their own characteristics but also by the external context where they operate. Therefore, this study puts special attention on the regional and industrial determinants of the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms, controlling by their individual characteristics. To determine the variation of TFP explained by industrial and regional factors, a multilevel model is employed using hierarchical data structure from the Economic Census of 2010, which accounts for information of 511,130 firms. Previously, the TFP was estimated using the instrumental variable method in order to deal with the endogeneity issue between the production output and used inputs. The employed valid instruments are the number of firms in the canton and paved and cobbled roads. The results of the multilevel model show that, as expected, the most part of the variation is explained by individual characteristics of firms. However, the remaining variation is associated with the cantonal and industrial levels. The cantonal environment of firms explains 2.5% of the total heterogeneity of the total factor productivity. The characteristics of the economic sector explain a 8,2% of the TFP variation. Finally, using both the cantonal and industrial levels in the multilevel model, the results show that 9.7% of the TFP variation is explained.