IMF Working Papers

We study how commodity booms affect productivity using administrative microdata from Chile combining firm exports by product and destination, employer-employee records, and firm-to-firm production networks. Exploiting differential Chinese demand across Chilean commodity products, we measure firms’ exposure to the boom and trace its effects on productivity and resource allocation. We find three mechanisms. First, more exposed firms experience larger revenue increases but no differential productivity gains, channeling revenues into wages and materials. Second, among exposed firms, low-productivity firms expand employment while high-productivity firms do not, hiring workers from more productive employers. Third, domestic suppliers with greater indirect exposure show larger sales and productivity gains. We develop a model with heterogeneous export wedges and labor market frictions in which commodity booms can reduce sectoral productivity by exacerbating input misallocation, consistent with firm-level and aggregate evidence. Calibrated to Chile, this mechanism explains half of the mining TFP decline from 2005 to 2013.