Development accounting literature usually attributes the observed cross-country variation in per capita income to differences in countries' factor endowments and total factor productivity (the Solow residual). While the former can be relatively straightforward interpreted and measured, the...

Internationally active firms rely intensively on trade credits even though they are considered particularly expensive. This phenomenon has been little explored so far. Our theoretical analysis shows that trade credits can alleviate financial constraints arising from asymmetric information...

We analyze the competitive effects of backward vertical integration by a partially vertically integrated firm that competes with non-integrated firms both upstream and downstream. We show that vertical integration is procompetitive under fairly general conditions. It can be anticompetitive only...

This report argues in favour of an economics-based approach to Article 82, in a way similar to the reform of Article 81 and merger control. In particular, we support an effects-based rather than a form-based approach to competition policy. Such an approach focuses on the presence of...

Europe is reorganizing its international value chain. I document these changes in Europe's international organization of production with new survey data of Austrian and German firms investing in Eastern Europe. I show estimates of the share of intrafirm trade between Austria or Germany on the...

We study the potential of cooperation in global emission abatements with multiple externalities. Using a two-country model without side-payments, we identify the strategic effects under different timing regimes of cooperation. We obtain a positive complementarity effect of long-term cooperation...

In a two-country international trade model with oligopolistic competition, we study the conditions on market structure and trade costs under which a merger policy designed to benefit domestic consumers is too tough or too lenient from the viewpoint of the foreign country. Calibrating the model...

This paper studies the relationship between export activities and firm-level productivity. Unique matching of German and Austrian micro data from 1994 to 2003 suggests that exporters are more productive by around 40 percent compared with non-exporters. Moreover, beside other analysis techniques,...

Governments in the EU grant Rescue and Restructure Subsidies to bail out ailing firms. In an international asymmetric Cournot duopoly we study effects of such subsidies on market structure and welfare. We adopt a common market setting, where consumers from the two countries form one market. We...