This paper analyses the impact of business process outsourcing (BPO) on firm productivity based on a comprehensive German firm-level panel data set covering manufacturing and service industries. The growing importance of service inputs into the production process is undisputed. Firms...

Studies of spatial policy interdependence in (local) public policies usually concentrate on the relations between jurisdictions within a single analysed region, and disregard possible extra-regional effects. This paper evaluates the validity of such restriction by studying German local...

This thesis consists of three papers that examine Marshallian sources of growth and interdependent location of Swedish firms and households. Paper [I] examines the impact of static and dynamic knowledge externalities and their impact on Swedish market operating firms growth pattern between 1997...

Milk is one of the main sources for the livelihood of pastoralists around the world. Somali Region in Ethiopia is famous for the high density of livestock, implying significant potential for milk production. The perishable nature of the milk and the absence of the milk processing facilities do...

The objective of this study is to identify the economic feasibility of the investment made to establish a commercial slaughterhouse facility in Faafan village, Somali Regional State, Ethiopia. Although the financial feasibility of the facility is essential for the project, the main purpose of...

The prevalence of malnutrition, vitamin-A deficiency, and anemia is high in Uganda. Of children under 5 years of age, 33 percent are stunted and 5 percent wasted. The rate of anemia among women and children is as high as 50 percent. The aim of this study is to identify if a 5 year off-take...

We apply duality methods of linear and convex programming to the problems of operation and rental valuation of facilities for conversion and storage of cyclically priced goods, e.g. , energy. Both problems are approached by shadow-pricing the stock (which is a purely intermediate commodity); and...

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers’ convergence could therefore...

This Paper shows how microeconomic data on investment plans can be used to study the structure of risk faced by firms. Revisions of investment plans form a martingale, and thus reveal the underlying shocks driving investment. We decompose revisions in investment plans into micro, sector and...

This paper documents the delayed adoption of a major technological innovation: the adoption of the diesel locomotive in the US railway industry. Contrary to other instances of major technological innovations, the delay in the adoption of the diesel locomotive was not associated with an initial...