This paper presents new evidence on managerial and organizational factors that explain firm level energy efficiency and TFP. We interviewed managers of 190 randomly selected manufacturing plants in the UK and matched their responses with official business microdata. We find that 'climate...

When industry compensation is offered to prevent relocation of regulated firms, efficiency requires that payments be distributed across firms so as to equalize marginal relocation probabilities, weighted by the damage caused by relocation. We formalize this fundamental economic logic and apply...

We estimate the impacts of the Climate Change Levy (CCL) on manufacturing plants using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of outcomes between plants subject to the CCL and plants that were granted an 80% discount on the levy after...

This paper develops an infinite-horizon, political agency model with a continuum of political districts, in which incumbent politicians can improve their re-election probability by attracting swing voters in key states through strategic trade protection. A unique equilibrium is shown to exist...

This paper explores a newly-available panel data set merging balance sheet and international trade transaction data for Belgium. Both imports and exports appear to be highly concentrated among few firms and seem to have become more so over time. Focusing on manufacturing, we find that facts...

This paper analyses the interaction between credit constraints and trading behaviour. I construct a unique dataset containing firm-level trade transactions data, balance sheets and credit scores from an independent credit insurance company for Belgian manufacturing firms between 1999 and 2007....

How much should governments subsidize the development of new clean technologies? We use patent citation data to investigate the relative intensity of knowledge spillovers in clean and dirty technologies in two technological fields: energy production and transportation. We introduce a new...

Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? We construct new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between "dirty" (internal combustion engine) and "clean" (e.g. electric and hybrid) patents across 80 countries over several decades. We show that...

A startling fact of firm level productivity analysis is the large and persistent differences in both labour productivity and total factor productivity (TFP) between firms in narrowly defined sectoral classes. The competitiveness of an industry is potentially an important factor explaining this...

The net entry contribution to aggregate productivity growth has increased dramatically in the UK over 1990saccording to calculations based on data from the Annual Respondents Database (ARD). Some recent studieshave tried to link this to other structural changes over the same period such as...