Does Input-Trade Liberalization Affect Firms’ Foreign Technology Choice?
研究了投入品关税削减如何影响企业从国外进口资本品以升级技术，发现关税削减提高了企业进口资本品的概率，且这种效应因企业初始生产率水平而异。
This paper studies the impact of input-trade liberalization on firms’ decision to upgrade foreign technology embodied in imported capital goods. Our empirical analysis is motivated by a simple theoretical framework of endogenous technology adoption, heterogeneous firms and imported inputs. The model predicts a positive effect of input tariff reductions on firms’ technology choice to source capital goods from abroad. This effect is heterogeneous across firms depending on their initial productivity level. Relying on India’s trade liberalization episode in the early 1990s, we demonstrate that the probability of importing capital goods is higher for firms producing in industries that have experienced greater cuts on tariffs on intermediate goods. Only those firms in the middle range of the initial productivity distribution have benefited from input-trade liberalization to upgrade their technology.