If trade barriers are managed by inefficient institutions, trade liberalization can lead to greater-than-expected gains. We examine Chinese textile and clothing exports before and after the elimination of externally imposed export quotas. Both the surge in export volume and the decline in export...

Austria’s transition to a digital economy and society is slower than in other high-income small open European economies. The rate and pace of utilisation of eight main ICT applications shows that Austrian firms follow peer country counterparts with a gap, which has widened in most areas in...

L’economia italiana dal 2007 ha subìto una profonda turbolenza recessiva. In un sistema economico popolato da piccole e medie imprese, il più delle volte il dato nazionale nasconde la reale entità delle modifiche strutturali dei settori produttivi e delle realtà territoriali. L’economia...

The paper aims to verify the existence of the Flying Geese Model (FGM) in the case of inward FDI in Central European Countries (CECs) which are new EU member states; more precisely, to find out in what way and to what extent FDI has contributed to catching up, i.e. to the restructuring process...

This paper investigates the urbanization of the Indian manufacturing sector by combining enterprise data from formal and informal sectors. We find that plants in the formal sector are moving away from urban and into rural locations, while the informal sector is moving from rural to urban...

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...

This paper explores the links between exports, export destinations, and skill utilization. We identify two mechanisms behind these links: differences across destinations in quality valuation and in exporting required services, activities that are intensive in skilled labor. Depending on the...

The manufacturing sectors of developing countries have traditionally been relatively protected. They have also been subject to heavy regulation, much of which has favored large firms. Accordingly, it is often argued that in these countries: (1) markets tolerate inefficient firms, so cross-firm...