This paper develops a sequential learning estimator of production functions and productivity dynamics for unbalanced establishment panels. Extending an idea from the literature on dynamic industry models, establishments are uncertain about their own idiosyncratic productivities and update...

Cobb Douglas production function parameters are not identified from cross-section variation when inputs are perfectly flexible and chosen optimally, and input prices are common to all firms. We consider the role of adjustment costs for inputs in identifying these parameters in this context. The...

Schooling is typically found to be highly correlated with individual earnings in African countries.  However, African firm or sector level studies have failed to identify a similarly strong effect for average worker schooling levels on productivity.  This has been interpreted as evidence that...

This study investigates the impact of joint-stock banks on the rationalisation of the British interwar steel industry.  A new panel data set of steel firm characteristics covering 1920 to 1938 is used to document rationalization and bank involvement, including interlocking directorships, with...

The labour productivity differentials between manufacturing firms in Ghana and South Korea exceed those implied by macro analysis.  Median value-added per employee is nearly 40 times higher in South Korea than Ghana.  The most important single factor in explaining this difference is the...

Suppose we observe a finite number of input decisions made by a firm, as well as the prices at which those inputs were acquired.  What conditions on the set of observations are necessary and sufficient for it to be consistent with a firm choosing inputs to maximize profit, subject to a...

This paper surveys the most popular parametric and semi-parametric estimators for Cobb-Douglas production functions arising from the econometric literature of the past two decades. We focus on the different approaches dealing with 'transmission bias' in firm-level studies, which arises from...

Interconnections among financial institutions create potential channels for contagionand amplification of shocks to the financial system. Contagion occurs when a shock tothe assets of a single firm causes other firms to default through the network of obligations.We say that contagion is weak if...

List prices are not completely credible as take it or leave it prices: buyers are able to seek reductions by bargaining with firms. We show that this realisation leads to the existence of a critical threshold number of competitors in an industry which depends on fundamentals. In industries with...

This paper analyses the implications of bargaining between buyers and sellers on the competitive outcome in a homogeneous good industry. Bargaining creates a competitive equilibrium in which some inefficient sellers coexist with efficient ones leading to productivity dispersion. Rival cost...