Can strengthening the local content requirements meet a government`s need to raise industrial productivity and production?

Abstract

By taking firm heterogeneity in productivity into account in a monopolistic competition market in a general-equilibrium model setting, this paper investigates whether a stricter local content requirements (LCRs) can increase both productivity and production in the domestic intermediate-goods industry. The result shows that stricter LCRs policy cannot simultaneously increase both. The initial level of LCRs plays an important role in policy effectiveness. If it is below a critical level, a stricter LCRs can increase production but decrease productivity; however, production decreases but productivity increases if the initial LCRs are higher than the critical level.