We use a French firm-level panel data set over the period 1993-2004 to analyze the relationship between credit constraints and firms' R&D behavior over the business cycle. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) the share of R&D investment over total investment is countercyclical...

This paper proposes a model in the spirit of Aghion et al. (2005) that encompasses the magnitude of the impact of competition on R&D according to the cost of the innovation. The effect of competition on R&D is an inverted U-shape. However, the shape is flatter and competition policy is therefore...

The share of retail sales made via distance selling has increased steadily, driven by Internet sales. Meanwhile, a large body of research has been devoted to measuring the impact of online shopping on consumer prices. These studies are based primarily on microeconomic data and they reveal...

This paper studies the effect of credit constraints on the expansion and survival of firms in foreign markets. It develops a model in which, lower access to external finance, or reduced internal liquidity, hampers the firm ability to finance the recurrent costs to serve foreign markets and...

We use French microdata to test an ubiquitous property of firm-based models of importing. When firm efficiency is factor neutral and input prices and qualities are common across firms, firm size should have no effect on expenditure shares on the different products and varieties sourced, holding...

We document the impact of travel time between headquarters and affiliates of geographically dispersed corporate groups on the management of such business organizations. Theory suggests that the easier circulation of managers might facilitate the transmission of information between production...

Trade in intermediate inputs allows firms to reduce their costs of production and thus benefits consumers through lower prices of domestically produced goods. The extent to which firms participate in foreign input markets, however, varies substantially. We develop a methodology to measure how...