This study analyzes the use of design and the position of the design function in Finnish manufacturing firms. We also study the impact of design on companies business performance. The paper is based on a survey directed to the member companies of the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK) in...

This study analyses the dynamics of productivity growth at the micro level in Finnish manufacturing industries. It is shown that productivity-enhancing restructuring (so-called “creative destruction”) has played a crucial role especially since the mid-1980s. Empirical evidence is provided...

In this paper we analyze the evolution of firm financial efficiency in the Czech Republic. Using a large panel of more than 400,000 Czech firm/years we study whether firms fully utilize their resources, how firm financial efficiency evolves over time, and how firm financial efficiency is...

After a quick profile of Italian foreign direct investments since 1900 and a short review of the main explanations of the lagged multinational growth by Italian manufacturing companies, a quick glimpse of business histories is given to the only two still today living "old protagonists" (Pirelli,...

This study analyzes trends in specialization of the Finnish industry since the 1980s. Low technology industries, such as pulp and paper, have had traditionally a large proportion of the Finnish industrial output. During the recent decades their share of output has decreased significantly and...

The report analyses the impacts of globalization on competitiveness of national economies, industries and firms. The focus is in mechanical and electrical engineering and machinery. Global division of labor has significantly changed over the past few decades when the large emerging economies...

The paper analyses the sharp devergence in the nineties between capital formation in the main euro-area countries, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. We have used data from the OECD's International Sectoral Data Base (ISDB), which includes data comparable across a certain...

This paper investigates the markup of price over marginal cost in Italian manufacturing branches. The approach used is an extension of Hall's model that addresses some measurement shortcomings and theoretical limitations that may affect this class of model.

Using data from Ufficio italiano dei cambi for the period 1997-2001, the study analyses the distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) outflows by sector and local area of origin. It tries to identify which local industrial structures determine a larger propensity to invest abroad, focusing...

In this paper we estimate the demand for liquidity by US non financial firms using data from COMPUSTAT database. In contrast to the previous literature, we consider firm-specific effects, such as cost-of-capital and wages. From the balanced and unbalanced panel estimations we infer that there...