Fernandes, Ana Margarida

Person:
Fernandes, Ana Margarida

Development Research Group, The World Bank

Author Name Variants

Fernandes, Ana Margarida, Fernandes, Ana, Fernandes, Ana M., Fernandes, A.M., Fernandes, A., Margarida Fernandes, Ana

Fields of Specialization

Trade, Export dynamics, Export diversification, Productivity, Innovation

External Links

Google Bio

Departments

Development Research Group, The World Bank

Last updated: August 13, 2025

Biography

Ana Margarida Fernandes is a Lead Economist in the Trade and International Integration Unit of the Development Research Group at the World Bank. She joined the World Bank as a Young Economist in 2002. Her research examines the consequences of openness to trade and FDI for firm-level productivity, innovation and quality upgrading. Her work has also focused 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 studying the links between exporter growth and dynamics, development, policies, and shocks. She is currently working on deep trade agreements and on corruption in customs and tax evasion.

Full item page

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 62

Fertilizer Import Bans, Agricultural Exports, and Welfare: Evidence from Sri Lanka
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-12-20) Ghose, Devaki; Fraga, Eduardo; Fernandes, Ana
In May 2021, Sri Lanka’s government imposed an abrupt ban on chemical fertilizer imports. This paper leverages this natural experiment to quantify the costs of a lack of access to fertilizer for agricultural production and trade in a developing economy heavily dependent on agriculture. Using high-frequency firm-level trade data, ground production records, newly developed remote sensing crop yield estimates, and event study designs, the analysis reveals significant declines in fertilizer imports, agricultural output, and exports of fertilizer-dependent crops. These findings underscore the importance of trade policy for chemical fertilizer, which is hard to substitute with organic or domestic alternatives in the short run. A quantitative spatial model of trade and agriculture shows the ban’s average welfare effects were equivalent to a 4.35% income reduction, with proportionate losses for farmers, estate workers, and the regions that cultivate fertilizer-intensive crops. The model also highlights the interaction of massive fertilizer subsidies, a domestic agricultural policy common in many countries, with trade policy: by nearly eliminating fertilizer use, an import ban scales down the subsidy program and its associated income transfers from non-farming to farming sectors, thus attenuating the welfare losses of mobile workers. The findings quantify the costs of lack of fertilizer access and the role of trade and industrial policy in determining such access.
The Impact of Trade Promotion Organizations on Exports: Evidence from the COVID-19 Pandemic
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-13) Choi, Yewon; Fernandes, Ana Margarida; Grover, Arti; Iacovone, Leonardo; Olarreaga, Marcelo
This paper examines the impact of trade promotion organizations on exports during the COVID-19 pandemic using a World Bank survey. The results suggest that increased trade promotion organization budgets significantly boosted exports during downturns but had no effect during the recovery phase. Interestingly, e-commerce programs adopted by trade promotion organizations negatively affected exports during downturns as they diverted resources away from productive support, especially for sectors not intensive in online trade. These findings suggest that countercyclical trade promotion organizations budgets may enhance trade resilience during similar global shocks.
Quality Regulation Creates and Reallocates Trade
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-14) Zavala, Lucas; Fernandes, Ana; Haygood, Ryan; Reed, Tristan; Reyes, Jose-Daniel
Quality regulation has become the dominant instrument of trade policy. Panel evidence shows that regulations classified as sanitary and phytosanitary measures and technical barriers to trade both increase trade on average. Other non-tariff measures like quotas decrease trade. Sanitary and phytosanitary measures reallocate trade from lower-income exporting countries to higher-income exporting countries, while technical barriers to trade measures do the opposite. Sanitary and phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade measures increase the sales concentration of exporting firms from lower-income countries, but do not affect the concentration of exporting firms from higher-income countries or importing firms. The costs of quality regulation are primarily borne by exporting firms, especially in lower-income countries.
Containing Tariff Evasion
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-21) Clement, Anne; Chalendard, Cyril; Fernandes, Ana; Rijkers, Bob; Vicard, Vincent
To identify transactions at risk of tariff evasion, this paper matches export transaction data from France with import transaction data from Madagascar using container identifiers. Reporting discrepancies between exporters and importers are prevalent but small, with over two-fifths of importers reporting in a way that increases their tariff liability. Yet, aggregate tariff revenues are 24 percent lower due to discrepancies. These revenue losses are highly concentrated: the top five evaders account for three-quarters of all tariff revenue losses and larger shipments are more at risk of evasion. Tariff enforcement in Madagascar is ineffective and only marginally mitigates revenue losses.
Adjusting to Transitory Shocks: Worker Impact, Firm Channels, and (Lack of) Income Support
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-05-22) Silva, Joana; Fernandes, Ana Margarida
This paper estimates worker, firm and assistance programs’ responses to foreign shocks in Brazil exploiting quasi-experimental variation in firms’ foreign demand resulting from the Global Financial Crisis. It shows these transitory shocks have permanent effects in a setting characterized by a large informal sector. While the informal sector provides a buffer mitigating long-term scarring, it is not sufficient to compensate worker and firm scarring. Scarring occurs for incumbent workers, not just displaced workers. Linking employer-employee data with the national registry of low-income households, unemployment insurance disbursement records, and worker-level training, the paper finds that assistance programs fail to mitigate adjustment. Training does not respond, unemployment insurance compensates 4 percent of workers’ wage losses and welfare programs 2 percent. Firms in highly concentrated sectors or state-owned do not bear the burden of adjustment. Other firms bear the burden and either exit or restructure, downsizing employment and productivity, scarring incumbent workers and increasing long-run inequality.
Determinants of Global Value Chain Participation: Cross-Country Evidence
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2021-08-30) Kee, Hiau Looi; Fernandes, Ana Margarida; Winkler, Deborah
The past decades have witnessed big changes in international trade with the rise of global value chains (GVCs). Some countries, such as China, Poland, and Vietnam rode the tide, while other countries, many in the Africa region, faltered. This paper studies the determinants of countries’ GVC participation, based on a panel database of more than 100 countries from 1990 to 2015. Results from a three-pronged empirical approach show that factor endowments, geography, political stability, liberal trade policies, foreign direct investment and domestic industrial capacity are very important in determining GVC participation. These factors matter more for GVC trade than traditional trade.
Heterogeneous Impacts of SPS and TBT Regulations: Firm-Level Evidence from Deep Trade Agreements
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Lefebvre, Kevin; Fernandes, Ana Margarida; Rocha, Nadia
This paper estimates the impacts of regulating the use of sanitary and phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade measures through preferential trade agreements on exports of firms in Chile, Colombia, and Peru along the firm size spec trum. The analysis exploits novel data from the World Bank Deep Trade Agreements database and customs covering the universe of exporting firms in each country over 1996–2015. The paper uses a firm-product gravity equation with a stringent set of fixed effects and controls for the overall depth of the preferential trade agreements and product-specific bilateral tariffs. The findings show that firms’ exports increase significantly in destination markets with preferential trade agreements, including a larger number of sanitary and phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade provisions, and the effect is stronger for smaller firms. Provisions for the harmonization of sanitary and phytosanitary regulations in preferential trade agreements also have greater benefits for the exports of smaller firms, and so do preferential trade agreements, including stronger transparency provisions for sanitary and phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade regulations. The results are robust to dropping larger exporters and highly concentrated export sectors to address endogeneity. The benefits of sanitary and phytosanitary and technical barriers to trade provisions are mainly driven by sectors with more heavily-regulated products. Entry into new product markets and increases in export quality partly explain the rising exports of smaller firms. Finally, the estimated impacts are similar regardless of the income level of the preferential trade agreement partners.
Globally Engaged Firms in the COVID-19 Crisis
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-04) Constantinescu, Cristina; Fernandes, Ana Margarida; Grover, Arti; Poupakis, Stavros; Reyes, Santiago
This paper analyzes the initial impact and recovery of globally engaged firms from the COVID-19 crisis. It uses rich survey data of nearly 65,000 firm-year observations in 45 countries spanning three waves of data collection. The findings are organized in a series of stylized facts, which suggest that although the pandemic had an immediate adverse impact on most firms, the globally engaged ones are recovering faster, possibly due to their higher capabilities. Among globally engaged firms, those directly involved with international markets show better recovery than the ones that were indirectly involved. These results mask wide variation by firm traits, sectoral attributes, and country characteristics. At the core of the recovery of globally engaged firms is their heightened response to the crisis by finding novel ways to adapt supply chains even in the presence of lockdowns and uncertainty. These firms swiftly digitalized, introduced new products and changed their markets and sources of inputs. Over and above their capabilities, global engagement cushions firms against shocks. Policymakers could therefore facilitate global linkages by providing information on potential markets and products, by making production flexible in terms of facilitating remote work, reducing the rigidity of contracts; and incentivizing financial institutions to issue instruments that reduce uncertainty risk.
How Resilient Was Trade to COVID-19 ?
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-03) Bas, Maria; Fernandes, Ana; Paunov, Caroline
This paper examines which product supply-side characteristics affect the resilience of traded products to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on monthly product-level exports by all countries to the United States, Japan, and 27 European Union countries from January 2018 to December 2020, the paper estimates a difference-in-differences specification for the impact of COVID-19 incidence (deaths per capita) mediated by product characteristics, accounting for when exports reach their destination by relying on product transportation lags. Higher reliance on foreign inputs, China as an input supplier, and unskilled labor and a lower degree of complexity negatively affected exports as a result of COVID-19.
Corruption in Customs
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10) Chalendard, Cyril; Fernandes, Ana M.; Raballand, Gael; Rijkers, Bob
This paper presents a new methodology to detect corruption in customs and applies it to Madagascar’s main port. Manipulation of assignment of import declarations to inspectors is identified by measuring deviations from random assignment prescribed by official rules. Deviant declarations are more at risk of tax evasion, yet less likely to be deemed fraudulent by inspectors, who also clear them faster. An intervention in which inspector assignment was delegated to a third party validates the approach, but also triggered a novel manifestation of manipulation that rejuvenated systemic corruption. Tax revenue losses associated with the corruption scheme are approximately 3 percent of total taxes collected and highly concentrated among a select few inspectors and brokers.