For the period 2004-2010 many OECD countries have experienced a decline in industrial real value-added per capita with negative consequences for domestic economic development, and labour markets, not only in industry but also in services and other production sectors. Free competition policies...

This paper explores the evolution of the average wage of employees over the life-cycle of a manufacturing plant. The average wage starts out low for a new plant and increases along with labor productivity as the plant ages. As a plant approaches exit, its average wage falls, but more slowly than...

Turkey's business sector has achieved high growth over the past few years and - on average - has coped well with increased competition. However, some labour-intensive sectors lost competitiveness prior to the currency depreciation in mid-2006 and faced employment losses, raising political...

Even before the global crisis, the Italian economy was experiencing international difficulties, although the slow growth and declining share of world trade were accompanied by a perceptible process of manufacturing transformation. The paper uses data from the Bank of Italy’s survey of...

Within-industry differences in measured plant-level productivity are large. A large literature has been devoted to explaining the causes and consequences of these differences. In the U.S. Census Bureau's manufacturing data, the Bureau imputes for missing values using methods known to result in...

Supergame theoretical predictions tell that oligopoly pricing may be procyclical or counter-cyclical. Industry by industry analysis shows that the speed of industry growth and the size of fixed cost are crucial in distinguishing characteristically counter-cyclical industries from procyclical...

Although a large literature seeks to explain the "missing middle" of mid-sized firms in developing countries, there is surprisingly little empirical backing for existence of the missing middle. Using microdata on the full distribution of both formal and informal sector manufacturing firms in...

General Motors was once regarded as the best-managed and most successful firm in the world. However, between 1980 and 2009, GM's US market share fell from 46 to 20 percent, and in 2009 the firm went bankrupt. We argue that the conventional explanation for this decline?namely high legacy labor...