David Atkin
David Atkin is a Research Programme Director for the IGC’s Firms research programme.
David Atkin is currently a Professor of Economics at MIT. He was previously an Assistant Professor at UCLA and Yale, after receiving his PhD from Princeton University. His primary fields are trade and development. David’s research focuses on evaluating the impacts of trade liberalization on the poor in the developing world by using the microeconometric tools and the large household datasets common in applied economics to analyze trade and development issues. His recent work has studied the role of regional taste differences in altering the impacts of trade reforms in India, and educational responses to the rise of export oriented manufacturing in Mexico.
Content by David Atkin
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Publication - Evidence Paper
IGC evidence paper - Firms, trade, and productivity
Productivity growth is the driving force behind economic development. A large development accounting literature has shown that much of the difference in income per capita across countries can be explained by differences in total factor productivity (TFP) (see, e.g., Hall and Jones 1999, Caselli 2005). On top of its “direct” effect on output, TFP growth can have positive...
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Project
Quality upgrading in Myanmar's rice sector
Linking developing countries’ agricultural producers to foreign markets often requires upgrading product quality (Gereffi (1999), Verhoogen (2008), Atkin et al. (2017)). Typical interventions seek to target a single point along the chain, such as improving fertiliser access to farmers or providing processors credit to upgrade technology. For agricultural goods, achieving...
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Project
Trade research and capacity building
Myanmar is strategically located between India and China, two of the largest economies in the world. To take advantage of this position, the Government of Myanmar needs to implement trade policies and guidelines that are evidence driven, as well as maximises the national employment, domestic products and productivity. The constraints for the Ministry of Commerce to fully...
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Publication - Growth Brief
Trading up: The benefits of exporting for small firms
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) provide the majority of jobs in developing countries, yet they have low productivity and exports. International trade can spur the growth of SMEs. SMEs employ a large proportion of the labour force in developing countries. Compared to large firms, however, few SMEs export – direct exports represent just 3% of total SME...
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Publications Reader Item
Trading up: The benefits of exporting for small firms
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Project
Understanding low productivity in developing countries: Evidence from the airline industry
Economists have long been interested in documenting and explaining the gap in productivity between developing and developed countries. Understanding the determinants of low productivity in the developing world is important not just for economists. This knowledge is vital for policymakers in government, our primary stakeholders, in order to guide the design of industrial...
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Blog post
Retail globalisation and household welfare: Evidence from Mexico
A “supermarket revolution”, fuelled by foreign retail entry has transformed the Mexican retail landscape. Despite concerns that foreign retailers would adversely affect retail employment and household incomes, the empirical evidence suggests that liberalising retail FDI has generated widespread gains for Mexican households. A radical transformation is occurring in the...
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Project
Evidence from a randomised experiment in Pakistan
Spillovers between firms, and in particular technology spillovers, play a central role in many theories of economic growth and provide the economic rationale for many industrial policies. Despite the centrality of such in theoretical and policy discussions of the growth process, the empirical evidence for their existence is weak. Our research aims to provide rigorous,...
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Publication - Policy Brief
Organisational barriers to technology adoption: Evidence from soccer-ball producers in Pakistan (Policy Brief)
Spillovers between firms are key to generating economic benefit according to some theories of economic growth. It is often thought interventions such as further investment and industrial policy are needed to reach the socially optimum amount of investment and overcome coordination failures. However, empirical evidence for technology spillovers is weak. Research...
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Publication - Working Paper
Organizational Barriers to Technology Adoption: Evidence from Soccer-Ball Producers in Pakistan (Working Paper)
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Project
Who's getting globalised? Intra-national trade costs and world price pass-through in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa
Researchers used new methodology to measure the costs that prevent consumers in remote locations of developing countries from accessing the benefits of global trade. Estimates show the cost of transporting goods within Ethiopia or Nigeria is four to five times larger than in the US. Consumers in remote locations see only a small part of the gains from...
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Project
The impact of exporting: Evidence from a randomised experiment
Exports are an effective way for developing countries to accelerate growth but there is mixed evidence on the extent to which exports reduce poverty and generate knock-on effects throughout the local economy, and little is known about what determines the export performance of firms in developing countries. This research project randomly provided small-scale enterprises in...