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This paper examines whether importing has contributed to skill upgrading among Indonesian plants. Our data records the distribution of years of employee schooling in each plant. We examine how importing affects the demand for highly educated workers within both production and non-production occupation categories at the plant level. We estimate a model of importing and skill-biased technological change in which selection into importing arises due to unobservable heterogenous returns from importing. We find that importing has substantially increased the relative demand for educated production workers, but has had little impact on the demand for educated non-production workers.

To what extent does a tax credit affect firms' R&D activity? What are the mechanisms? This paper examines the effect of R&D tax credits on firms' R&D expenditure by exploiting the variation across firms in the changes in the eligible tax credit rate between 2000 and 2003. Estimating the first-difference equation of the linear R&D model by panel GMM, we find the estimated coefficient of an interaction term between the eligible tax credit rate and the debt-to-asset ratio is positive and significant, indicating that the effect of tax credit is significantly larger for firms with relatively large outstanding debts. Conducting counterfactual experiments, we found that the aggregate R&D expenditure in 2003 would have been lower by 3.0-3.4 percent if there had been no tax credit reform in 2003, where 0.3-0.6 percent is attributable to the effect of financial constraint, and that the aggregate R&D expenditure would have been larger by 3.1-3.9 percent if there had been no cap on the amount of tax credits, where 0.3-0.8 percent is attributable to relaxing the financial constraint of firms with outstanding debts.

This paper develops an open economy model with heterogeneous final goods producers who simultaneously choose whether to export their goods and whether to use imported intermediates. The model highlights mechanisms whereby import policies affect aggregate productivity, resource allocation, and industry export activity along both the extensive and intensive margins. Using the theoretical model, we develop and estimate a structural empirical model that incorporates heterogeneity in productivity and shipping costs using Chilean plant-level data for a set of manufacturing industries. The estimated model is consistent with the key features of the data regarding productivity, exporting, and importing. We perform a variety of counterfactual experiments to assess quantitatively the positive and normative effects of barriers to trade in import and export markets. These experiments suggest that there are substantial aggregate productivity and welfare gains due to trade. Furthermore, because of import and export complementarities, policies which inhibit the importation of foreign intermediates can have a large adverse effect on the exportation of final goods.