Using a stochastic frontier model and a comprehensive dataset, we study factors that affect corporate efficiency in Europe. We find that (i) larger firms are less efficient than smaller firms, (ii) greater leverage contributes to corporate efficiency, and (iii) high competition is less...

Technological change can increase the productivity of the various factors of production in equal terms or it can be biased towards a specific factor. We develop an estimator for production functions when productivity is multi-dimensional. We directly assess the bias of technological change by...

We examine the impact of Chinese import competition on patenting, IT, R&D and TFP using a panel of up to half a million firms over 1996-2007 across twelve European countries. We correct for endogeneity using the removal of product-specific quotas following China’s entry into the World Trade...

Using input-output and world price data, this study computes domestic resource costs (DRCs) for branches of manufacturing industry in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and the former Soviet Union. The results show a wide dispersion of DRCs in each country, including branches with...

Using an RAS update to 1990 of an 86-sector input-output table for Hungary in 1986, and corresponding data on world-to-domestic price ratios for 1990, this paper calculates domestic resource costs (DRCs) for Hungarian industries. The disaggregated results are compared with corresponding...

We conduct a randomized control trial that generates exogenous variation in the access to foreign markets for rug producers in Egypt. Combined with detailed survey data, we causally identify the impact of exporting on firm performance. Treatment firms report 15-25 percent higher profits and...

We expect trade liberalization to give rise to aggregate productivity gains, as the least efficient firms are forced out, and labor is reallocated towards the best performing firms. But the positive intra-industry reallocation effects rely on the stark assumption that exporters’ superior...

We analyze the relationship between firm-level innovation activities and firms’ propensity to start exporting for firms in a small open economy. We measure innovation by innovative effort (R&D) as well as by innovative output (product and process innovation). After carefully correcting for...

This paper uses firm level panel data to investigate empirically the effects of direct foreign investment (DFI) on the productivity performance of domestic firms in three emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland. To this end a unique firm level panel data...

We discuss the restructuring of the textile and clothing industry in two East European countries. The paper compares the industry there with that in Portugal. Even though this study is only concerned with one particular industry, it reveals how wide and intensive the problems of transition are....