INCORPORATION OF SERVICES IN NATURAL RESOURCE-INTENSIVE GOODS: DESCRIPTION AND MEASUREMENT

ABSTRACT Purpose: To understand how services can add value to the production and exports of NRIGs, in which South American countries have comparative advantages. Originality/value: South American countries play a key role in international markets of the so-called Natural Resource Intensive Goods (NRIGs), particularly, mining and food. It has been discussed that this specialization pattern has disadvantages in terms of economic development, and both policy makers and academia repeatedly sustain the need to search for new international insertion schemes. In this paper, we discuss that one such avenue could be based on these comparative advantages themselves, through Services and in a particular infrastructure. Design/methodology/approach: To measure the relevance of economic infrastructure services on the competitiveness of NRIGs, we develop a sectoral approach using domestic input-output tables for six Latin American countries. In particular, we measure Services value added incorporated in NRIGs, and we also analyse the impacts of productivity changes in infrastructure services on NRIGs producer prices. Findings: Results allow to identify which infrastructure services are more important to each NRIG in each country.