Productivity, Trade, and Development in Latin America INTRODUCTION

Latin American countries face the very important challenge of increasing and sustaining high productivity growth. The literature has shown that income differences in respect to developed economies is explained mostly by differences in productivity. Some key aspects are innovation and international trade. However, although most of these countries opened their economies and introduced several public programs aimed to support innovation, the countries of the region present poor indicators in the generation and application of knowledge. In this introduction, I summarize the five articles collected in this issue. All of them are empirical contributions for understanding the relationship among productivity, trade, and development in these countries.