An important feature of eligibility which will be exploited in the identification is the fact that firms interested in receiving this assistance must complete a registration form made available by the Peiex team and their partner organizations<sup>22</sup> and submit the application to the nearest regional unit of attendance. These regional units - NOs (Portuguese acronym for Project Operational Units) - were opened in a staggered manner across few Brazilian states, starting in late 2008/2009. Table 4 shows the number of NOs in each state according to the semester-year they were implemented. More than half of the Brazilian states did not have a Peiex NO until 2010.

|Region|Estado|2|007|2|008|2|009|2|010|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|||First|Second|First|Second|First|Second|First|Second|
|Northeast|Cear ́a|-|-|-|1|1|1|1|1|
|Northeast|Pernambuco|-|-|-|1|1|1|1|1|
|Northeast|Alagoas|-|-|-|1|1|1|1|1|
|Northeast|Sergipe|-|-|-|1|1|1|1|1|
|Northeast|Bahia|-|-|-|1|4|4|4|4|
|Southeast|Minas Gerais|-|-|6|6|6|6|6|6|
|South|S ̃ao Paulo|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|1|
|South|Paran ́a|-|-|-|3|3|3|3|3|
|South|Rio Grande do Sul|-|-|-|7|7|7|8|8|
|Center-West|Goi ́as|-|-|-|1|1|1|1|1|
|Center-West|Distrito Federal|-|-|-|1|1|1|1|1|
|Total||-|-|6|23|26|26|27|28|

Table 4: Number and schedule of implementation of Peiex’s regional units (NO).

Note: The units were implemented in different micro-regions inside the states. First and Second refer to the semester of the year in which the NO was implemented.

Most of these units are concentrated in the South and the Northeast (with the exception of the state of Minas Gerais in the Southeast). An interesting feature from the perspective of a quasi-experiment is that states like S ̃ao Paulo, Santa Catarina and Rio de Janeiro, which together represent a large share of total firms (approximately 45%), exporting firms (almost 60%) and GDP in Brazil, received units only in December 2010, August 2011 and September 2011, respectively.<sup>23</sup> These NOs are composed by a manager, an industrial extensionist manager, firms’ extenstionists and trainees. After being selected, the staff are required to attend courses on Peiex’s methodology and trade. The first step of the assistance is based on interviews with managers and visits to the plant in order to get further information for an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the firms following Peiex’s standard methodology.

Based on this information, the extensionists propose a plan for introducing some improvements in fields related to strategic management, human resources, finance and cost, marketing, production, design and trade. In cases where the extensionists have no knowledge to give the necessary support for

> 22This includes industrial associations and universities in Brazil.

> 23Due to the fact that we are using annual data we considered the year of implementation based on the semester the NO was implemented in the state. It takes time for these agencies implement the program. Those NOs installed in the first semester of the year were considered as being over the year. S ̃ao Paulo was installed in December 2010. Therefore, it is considered as implemented in 2011.

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