Person:
Fernandes, Ana Margarida
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Trade,
Export dynamics,
Export diversification,
Productivity,
Innovation
Degrees
External Links
Departments
Development Research Group, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Ana Margarida Fernandes joined the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002. Her research examines the consequences of openness to trade and FDI for firm-level outcomes such as productivity, innovation and quality upgrading and more broadly the determinants of firm performance, including the role of the business environment. She has also worked on professional services in Africa. Recently her work has been focusing on the impact evaluation of trade-related policy interventions such as export promotion and customs reforms around the globe (Albania, Serbia, Madagascar, Tunisia). Since 2011 she has been managing the Exporter Dynamics Database project and working on the link between exporter growth and dynamics, development and policies. She was a core team member of the World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains. She received her M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University and a B.A. from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 55
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Publication
Structure and Performance of the Services Sector in Transition Economies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-09)This paper examines the structure and performance of the services sector in Eastern European and Central Asian countries during 1997-2004. Services represent an increasing share of total value added and employment with the major sub-sectors being wholesale trade, retail trade, inland transport, telecommunications, and real estate activities. A clear divide separates EU-5 countries from South Eastern European countries and Ukraine in terms of services labor productivity. Although a large gap in productivity also separates EU-8 countries from EU-15 countries, that gap was reduced from 1997 to 2004 as most services sub-sectors experienced fast productivity growth. High skill intensive sub-sectors and information and communications technology producers and users have exhibited higher productivity levels and growth rates relative to other sub-sectors since 2000. The author finds a positive effect of services liberalization on the productivity growth of services sub-sectors. The author also finds a positive and significant effect of services liberalization in both finance and infrastructure on the productivity of downstream manufacturing. -
Publication
Technology Adoption and the Investment Climate : Firm-Level Evidence for Eastern Europe and Central Asia
(World Bank, 2010-02-15)Survey data for 7,000 firms in 28 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are used to examine the correlates of technology adoption proxied by ISO certification and web use. Complementary inputs such as skilled labor, managerial capacity, research and development, finance, and good infrastructure are shown to be important correlates of technology adoption. The link between market incentives and technology adoption is more nuanced. While stronger consumer pressure is significantly associated with technology adoption, competitor pressure is not, suggesting that in developing economies where many input markets are imperfect, it is primarily firms with rents that are able to adopt new technology. Foreign-owned firms exhibit significantly better technology adoption outcomes, but privatized firms with domestic owners do not. -
Publication
Foreign Direct Investment in Services and Manufacturing Productivity Growth : Evidence for Chile
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)During the 1990s, foreign direct investment in producer service sectors in Latin America was massive. Such investment may increase the quality of services, reduce their cost, and offer opportunities for knowledge spillovers to downstream users of the services. This paper examines the effects of foreign direct investment in services on manufacturing productivity growth in Chile between 1992 and 2004. The authors estimate an extended production function where plant output growth depends on input growth and a weighted measure of foreign direct investment in services. The novelty of the approach is that the authors are able to assess the intensity of usage of various types of services at the plant level and use that information in the estimation of the importance of foreign direct investment in those services. The econometric results show a positive and significant effect of foreign direct investment in services on productivity growth of Chilean manufacturing plants which is robust to a multitude of tests. The economic impact of the estimates is that forward linkages from foreign direct investment in services account for almost 5 percent of the observed increase in Chilean manufacturing productivity growth during the sample period. This evidence therefore suggests that reducing the barriers restricting foreign direct investment in services in many developing economies may help accelerate productivity growth in their manufacturing sectors. -
Publication
Technology Adoption and the Investment Climate : Firm-Level Evidence for Eastern Europe and Central Asia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-09)The international diffusion of technology presents an opportunity for developing economies distant from the world technological frontier to reduce their income gap relative to advanced economies. It is therefore crucial to understand why, when faced with similar technological alternatives different firms in different countries choose to adopt different vintages of capital. This paper examines technology adoption across firms in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The findings show that access to complementary inputs - managerial capacity, skilled labor, finance, and good infrastructure - and to international knowledge - through foreign direct investment or exports - is an important correlate of technology adoption. The link between market incentives and technology adoption is more nuanced. Although consumer pressure results in technology adoption, competitor pressure does not, suggesting that only firms with rents are able to adopt technology given substantial resource constraints. Privatized firms exhibit better technology adoption outcomes but only when a clear private owner with a profit incentive is present. Better governance is associated with technology adoption only in the countries that joined the European Union in 2004. Future increases in technology adoption by firms in the region will require complementary reforms of the investment climate. -
Publication
Micro Dynamics of Turkey's Export Boom in the 2000s
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-05)This paper examines the microeconomics behind the dramatic export boom experienced by Turkey during the 2000s. Using disaggregated customs data covering the universe of export transactions for Turkey during the period 2002-2011, it characterizes firm-level dynamics in the export sector and decomposes export growth at the aggregate, sector, and destination market levels to identify the role of firm turnover, destination turnover, and product turnover. The paper shows that in the short-run, aggregate export growth is dominated by growth in continuous exporters, and for these, growth is dominated by exports to their continued destinations and of their continued products. However, the observed high degree of churning across firms, destinations, and products accounts in the long run for a substantial part of Turkey's export growth. The patterns of micro-dynamics of export growth are verified across sectors and across groups of destination markets with some exceptions regarding exports to new emerging markets where net entry by Turkish-based exporters plays a more critical role for long-run growth. -
Publication
Export Entrepreneurship and Trade Structure in Latin America during Good and Bad Times
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-04)The authors use a new dataset on export transactions for a large set of Latin American and Caribbean and comparator countries to assess the extent of "export entrepreneurship" during periods of fast export growth (2005-2007) and depressed external demand (2008-2009). Export entrepreneurship is equated with the extensive margin of exports, namely the advent of new exporting firms, new export products, and new export market destinations. The main findings are: (1) annual exporter entry, exit, and survival rates in Latin America and the Caribbean are quite similar to what is observed in other countries, and entry rates across sectors are quite similar but survival rates appear to be highest in agriculture; (2) the relative size of entrants into export markets (relative to incumbents) tended to be lower for natural resource-abundant countries during 2005-2007, but less so during the crisis years of 2008-2009; (3) entry rates tend to be lower in sectors in which a country has revealed comparative advantage, however, exit rates and survival rates of new exporters are higher in those sectors; and (4) the low growth of exports during the global recession of 2008-2009 in Latin America and the Caribbean was due to lower growth in exports of incumbent firms' pre-existing products and destinations, while new products and destinations tended to attenuate the recession's effects. Overall, the data suggest that the Latin American and Caribbean region appears to be no less entrepreneurial in terms of the extensive margins of exports than comparator countries. -
Publication
International Economic Activities and the Demand for Skilled labor: Evidence from Brazil and China
(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-10)Increases in international economic integration can lead to greater specialization according to comparative advantage, but also to the diffusion of skill-biased technologies. In developing countries characterized by relative abundance of unskilled labor, these factors can have opposite effects on the relative demand for skilled labor. This paper investigates the impact of the use of imported inputs, exports and foreign direct investment on the demand for skilled workers of Brazilian and Chinese manufacturing plants. We find that while in Brazil increased levels of international integration are associated with an increased demand for skilled labor, the opposite is true in China. -
Publication
Where to Spend the Next Million? Applying Impact Evaluation to Trade Assistance
(London: Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Bank, 2011)Trade policy has changed fundamentally since the days of structural adjustment and economy-wide trade reforms. Partly in reaction to the uneven results of trade policy reforms, the focus has shifted to more targeted interventions aimed at reducing trade costs and addressing market failures that inhibit exports. Significant national resources and international assistance are now devoted to trade facilitation and export promotion, and the international development community has galvanized around a new 'aid-for-trade' (AfT) mantra as a means of helping low-income countries integrate into the global economy. The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: in section two the report discusses the changing nature of trade policy. In section three the report reviews the available evidence on the impact of trade assistance. In section four the report considers a detailed menu of trade-related interventions and discusses the challenges to their evaluation. In section five the report addresses the data issues crucial to impact evaluation. Finally, in section six the report look at the future challenges to doing Independent Evaluation (IE) in trade assistance. -
Publication
Lessons for Matching Grant Programs from Failed Attempts to Evaluate Them
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-01)This note illustrates a case where attempting to do impact evaluations can provide valuable knowledge, even if the impact evaluations ultimately are unable to be completed. -
Publication
Evaluating Aid for Trade : A Survey of Recent Studies
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-01)The demand for accountability in aid-for-trade is increasing but monitoring has focused on case studies and impressionistic narratives. The paper reviews recent evidence from a wide range of studies, recognizing that a multiplicity of approaches is needed to learn what works and what does not. The review concludes that there is some support for the emphasis on reducing trade costs through investments in hard infrastructure (like ports and roads) and soft infrastructure (like customs). But failure to implement complementary reform -- especially the introduction of competition in transport services -- may erode the benefits of these investments. Direct support to exporters does seem to lead to diversification across products and destinations, but it is not yet clear that these benefits are durable. In general, it is difficult to rely on cross-country studies to direct aid-for-trade. More rigorous impact evaluation is an underutilized alternative, but situations of clinical interventions in trade are rare and adverse incentives (because of agency problems) and costs (because of the small size of project) are a hurdle in implementation.