Importing, Exporting and Aggregate Productivity in Large Devaluations∗ Joaquin Blaum.† July 2017 Abstract A standard mechanism linking large real depreciations to declines in aggregate productivity is that firms’ access to foreign inputs is restricted. Recent quantitative trade models of importing predict that the economy’s aggregate import share should decrease following a real depreciation. I provide evidence that in fact the aggregate import share increases after a large depreciation. Using Mexican micro data, I show that the increase in the overall import intensity is explained by the expansion and entry of new exporters, which are intense importers. I develop a model of joint importing-exporting and discipline it to match salient features of the Mexican micro data. I study a counterfactual devaluation and show that the calibrated model can generate an increase in the aggregate import share and compositional effects in line with the data. A model with importing only cannot generate either, and predicts a decrease in aggregate productivity that is twice as large. JEL Codes: F11, F12, F14, F62, D21, D22 ∗I thank Ben Faber, Pablo Fajgelbaum, Michael Peters, Jesse Schreger and seminar participants at Brown, Atlanta Fed, LACEA-TIGN in Montevideo, Di Tella University, Nottingham GEP, SED in Edinburgh, SAET in Faro and the NBER IFM SI Meeting. I am grateful to Rob Johnson and Sebastian Claro for excellent discussions. I also thank the International Economics Section of Princeton University for its hospitality and funding during part of this research. †Brown University. Email:
[email protected] 1 1 Introduction Large economic crises in emerging markets are associated with sharp contractions in output and aggregate productivity as well as strong depreciations of the exchange rate - e.g.