In last few decades, Asian production networks have contributed significantly toward the rapid trade expansion and economic growth in East Asia. Developed Asia produces technology-intensive intermediate goods and capital goods and ships them to the People Republic of China (PRC) and ASEAN for...

Are firms` expectations systematically too optimistic or too pessimistic? Does it matter? We use micro data from the West German manufacturing subset of the IFO Business Climate Survey to infer quarterly production changes at the firm level and combine them with production expectations over a...

Aggregated output in industrialized countries has become less volatile over the past decades. Whether this Great Moderationʺ can be found in firm level data as well remains disputed. We study the evolution of firm level output volatility using a balanced panel dataset on German firms that...

With fixed costs of price and quantity adjustment, output effects of inflation depend on the elasticity of the firm's marginal real revenue. If the elasticity always exceeds minus unity, then output decreases with inflation, while if the elasticity is always less than minus unity, then output...

This paper finds that coherent regulatory policies can boost investment in network industries of OECD economies. Rate-of-return regulation is generally thought to result in overinvestment, while incentive regulation is believed to entail underinvestment. Yet, previous empirical work has...

This paper concerns public input provision as an instrument for redistribution under international outsourcing by using a model-economy comprising two countries, North and South, where firms in the North may outsource part of their low-skilled labor intensive production to the South. We consider...

Investment in network infrastructure can boost long-term economic growth in OECD countries. Moreover, infrastructure investment can have a positive effect on growth that goes beyond the effect of the capital stock because of economies of scale, the existence of network externalities competition...

Following the collapse of planning, new small and medium-sized firms rapidly emerged in all transition economies. Using firm level data, we investigate the interaction between the widespread opportunities for new business activities such firms faced and their business environment. The business...