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
May 22, 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 56
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Publication
Explaining Local Manufacturing Growth in Chile : The Advantages of Sectoral Diversity
(Taylor and Francis, 2012-04-05)This article investigates whether the agglomeration of economic activity in regional clusters affects long-run manufacturing Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth in an emerging market context. We explore a large firm-level panel dataset for Chile during a period characterized by high growth rates and rising regional income inequality (1992–2004). Our findings are clear-cut. Locations with greater concentration of a particular sector have not experienced faster TFP growth during this period. Rather, local sector diversity was associated with higher long-run TFP growth. However, there is no evidence that the diversity effect was driven by the local interaction with a set of suppliers and/or clients. We interpret this as evidence that agglomeration economies are driven by other factors such as the sharing of access to specialized inputs not provided solely by a single sector, e.g. skills or financing. -
Publication
Learning from the Experiments That Never Happened : Lessons from Trying to Conduct Randomized Evaluations of Matching Grant Programs in Africa
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. The authors attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of randomized experiments is publication bias, whereby only those experiments with "interesting" results get published. The hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. This paper describes the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delves into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in "last mile" issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. Lessons are drawn from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects. -
Publication
Are the Benefits of Export Support Durable? Evidence from Tunisia
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)This paper evaluates the effects of the FAMEX export promotion program in Tunisia on the performance of beneficiary firms. While much of the literature assesses only the short-term impact of such programs, the paper considers also the longer-term impact. Propensity-score matching, difference-in-difference, and weighted least squares estimates suggest that beneficiaries initially see faster export growth and greater diversification across destination markets and products. However, three years after the intervention, the growth rates and the export levels of beneficiaries are not significantly different from those of non-beneficiary firms. Exports of beneficiaries do remain more diversified, but the diversification does not translate into lower volatility of exports. The authors also did not find evidence that the program produced spillover benefits for non-beneficiary firms. However, the results on the longer-term impact of export promotion must be interpreted cautiously because the later years of the sample period saw a collapse in world trade, which may not have affected all firms equally. -
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
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. -
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
Learning from the Experiments that Never Happened : Lessons from Trying to Conduct Randomized Evaluations of Matching Grant Programs in Africa
(Elsevier, 2014-01-08)Matching grants are one of the most common policy instruments used by developing country governments to try to foster technological upgrading, innovation, exports, use of business development services and other activities leading to firm growth. However, since they involve subsidizing firms, the risk is that they could crowd out private investment, subsidizing activities that firms were planning to undertake anyway, or lead to pure private gains, rather than generating the public gains that justify government intervention. As a result, rigorous evaluation of the effects of such programs is important. We attempted to implement randomized experiments to evaluate the impact of seven matching grant programs offered in six African countries, but in each case we were unable to complete an experimental evaluation. One critique of development research is publication bias, whereby only “interesting” results get published. Our hope is to mitigate this bias by learning from the experiments that never happened. We describe the three main proximate reasons for lack of implementation: continued project delays, politicians not willing to allow random assignment, and low program take-up; and then delve into the underlying causes of these occurring. Political economy, overly stringent eligibility criteria that do not take account of where value-added may be highest, a lack of attention to detail in “last mile” issues, incentives facing project implementation staff, and the way impact evaluations are funded, and all help explain the failure of randomization. We draw lessons from these experiences for both the implementation and the possible evaluation of future projects. -
Publication
Trade Policy, Trade Volumes, and Plant-Level Productivity in Colombian Manufacturing Industries
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-05)Fernandes explores Colombian trade policy from 1977-91, a period of substantial variation in protection across industries, to examine whether increased exposure to foreign competition generates plant-level productivity gains. Using a large panel of manufacturing plants, she finds a strong positive impact of tariff liberalization on consistent productivity estimates, controlling for plant and industry heterogeneity. This result is not driven by the endogeneity of protection nor by plant exit. The impact of tariff liberalization on productivity is stronger for large plants and for plants in less competitive industries. Qualitatively similar results are obtained when using effective rates of protection and import penetration ratios as measures of protection -
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.