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...

A firm's productivity depends on how production is organized given the level of demand for its product. To capture this mechanism, we develop a theory of an economy where firms with heterogeneous demands use labor and knowledge to produce. Entrepreneurs decide the number of layers of management...

This paper offers a unique quantitative evaluation of the distribution of the welfare of a water privatization experience in Mali among labor, investors, intermediate input providers, users and taxpayers. The assessment is based on indicator duality and production theory. The paper shows that...

In this paper we use data on five social inclusion indicators (poverty, inequality, unemployment, education and health) to assess and compare the performance of 27 European welfare states (EU27) in 2008. Aggregate measures of performance are obtained using index number methods similar to those...

This paper considers the incentives of oligopolistic firms to diversify into technologically related markets when there are diseconomies of scope. There is a rent-extraction incentive for firms to adopt flexible technologies, which enable them to enter technologically related markets, thereby...

We measure the extent to which skilled immigrants increase innovation in the United States by exploring individual patenting behavior as well as state-level determinants of patenting. The 2003 National Survey of College Graduates shows that immigrants patent at double the native rate, and that...

Policy makers typically interpret positive relations between venture capital investments and innovations as an evidence that venture capital investments stimulate innovation ('VC-first hypothesis'). This interpretation is, however, one-sided because there may be a reverse causality that...

Over recent years `opportunity cost' (OC) models of growth have been constructed which suggest that firms take advantage of the possibility of intertemporal subsitution in order to engage in productivity-improving activities during recessions. This paper tests whether this argument is correct,...

During the second part of the 1990s, the Israeli economy experienced a surge in labour productivity and total factor productivity, which was driven primarily by the manufacturing sector. This surge in productivity coincided with the full absorption and integration into the workforce of highly...

There is a vast empirical literature on the effects of training on wages that are taken as an indirect measure of productivity. This paper is part of a smaller literature on the effects of training on direct measures of industrial productivity. We analyse a panel of British industries between...