Large US firms, by diffusing embodied technology through trade in intermediates, appear to drive Europe’s output over the medium term. We develop a two-country model of endogenous growth in varieties, cross-country firm heterogeneity and trade to match this evidence. A US TFP slowdown...

I test the predictions from Duca, Montero, Riggi and Zizza (2017), who develop a customer-market model with consumer switching costs and capital-market imperfections in which price-cost markups behave countercyclically, with a subsample of European firms participating in the Wage Dynamics...

Using a panel of Spanish firms over the period 2002-2012, we investigate the interactions between high growth episodes in terms of size and productivity. We find that high growth in productivity (size) increases the likelihood of high growth in size (productivity). However, the effect from size...

This paper analyzes the macroeconomic implications of customer capital accumulation at the firm level. We build an analytically tractable search model of firm dynamics in which firms compete for customers by posting pricing contracts in the product market. Cross-sectional price dispersion...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the evolution of productivity and how firm behavior and institutional conditions affects productivity. For that purpose, we use a longitudinal sample of Spanish manufacturing and services companies between 1983 and 2006, as well as OECD indicators on product...

A common assumption in the academic literature is that franchise value plays a key role in limiting bank risk-taking. As market power is the primary source of franchise value, reduced competition in banking markets has been seen as promoting banking stability. We test this hypothesis using data...

Many studies have established that a small number of firms, known as fast-growth firms or Gazelles, create most of the new jobs. In spite of the importance of this topic from a policy-point of view, most of those studies are descriptive and limited to a comparison of the characteristics of the...

This paper explores the dynamics of price-cost mark-ups using firm-level data, paying particular attention to the crisis period 2008-2011. To this end, we apply the econometric framework developed by Klette (1999) to a comprehensive sample of Spanish non-financial corporations in order to...

The use of collateral is one of the defining characteristics of loan contracts. This paper investigates if relationship lending and market concentration allow for informational rent extraction through collateral. We use equity IPO data as informational shocks that erode rent-seeking...

It is a well-known empirical regularity that small firms are less productive than large firms. However, does size cause productivity or vice versa? Using matching methods, I find that productivity shocks are followed by significant increases in size defined by employment. In contrast, size...