Competitive Pressure and Labor Productivity: World Iron-Ore Markets in the 1980's
利用20世纪80年代初世界钢铁产量暴跌这一自然实验，发现面临更大竞争压力的大西洋盆地铁矿石生产商劳动生产率翻倍，而太平洋盆地生产商几乎没有提升。
Does the extent of competitive pressure industries face influence their productivity? We study a natural experiment conducted in the iron ore industry as a result of the collapse in world steel production in the early 1980s. For iron ore producers, whose only market is the steel industry, this collapse was an exogenous shock. The drop in steel production differed dramatically by region: it fell by about a third in the Atlantic Basin but only very little in the Pacific Basin. Given that the cost of transporting iron ore is very high relative to its mine value, Atlantic iron ore producers faced a much greater increase in competitive pressure than did Pacific iron ore producers. In response to the crisis, most Atlantic iron ore producers doubled their labor productivity; Pacific iron ore producers experienced few productivity gains. ; This article originally appeared in the American Economic Review. (c) American Economic Association.