The Quality and the Destination of the Colombian Manufacturing Exports
The series Working Papers on Economics is published by the Office for Economic Studies at the Banco de la República (Central Bank of Colombia). The works published are provisional, and their authors are fully responsible for the opinions expressed in them, as well as for possible mistakes. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Banco de la República or its Board of Directors.
In this paper we describe the relationship between the quality of goods and inputs of Colombian manufacturing firms and the income level of their export markets. We show that there is a positive correlation between measures of product and input quality and measures of per capita income of export markets. These findings are consistent with the recent literature on the demand and supply of quality, and with evidence for other countries.