Using data from a randomized control trail in Sri Lanka, this paper explores whether cash and in-kind grants helped microenterprises approach the productivity level of SMEs.  The paper first estimates production functions and subsequently treatment effects on TFP levels.  Most significantly,...

This paper analyses and quantifies the effects of trade liberalisation and skill-biased technical change, both exogenous and trade-induced, on the skill premium and real wages of unskilled and skilled workers in the Mexican manufacturing sector, using industry- and firm-level data for 1984-1990...

We construct a unique panel dataset to examine how R&D and intellectual property (IP), via patents and trade marks, increase firm productivity. Knowledge has public good characteristics of non-depletability and non-excludability. Even with IP, imitation and inventing around other firm`s products...

This paper uses novel data on trade mark activity of UK manufacturing and service sector firms to investigate whether trade marks improve the profitability and productivity of firms. We first analyse Tobin`s q, the ratio of stock market value to book value of tangible assets. We then investigate...

This paper develops a sequential learning estimator of production functions and productivity dynamics for unbalanced establishment panels. Extending an idea from the literature on dynamic industry models, establishments are uncertain about their own idiosyncratic productivities and update...

The labour productivity differentials between manufacturing firms in Ghana and South Korea exceed those implied by macro analysis.  Median value-added per employee is nearly 40 times higher in South Korea than Ghana.  The most important single factor in explaining this difference is the...

In this paper we ask how technological differences in manufacturing across countries can best be modeled when using a standard production function approach.  We show that it is important to allow for differences in technology as measured by differences in parameters.  Of similar importance are...

Despite the widely recognised importance of the manufacturing industry for successful development few studies investigate this sector in cross-country analysis. We fill this gap in the literature by analysing manufacturing production across a large number of developing and developed economies....

This study provides statistical evidence that Russian rural/urban wages diverged substantially during the industrialization of Russia in the late nineteenth century. However, over time both the variation declined and integration somewhat increased as rural labour responded to new opportunities....

This paper investigates structural change in Argentina between 1900 and 1973.  It has been argued that trade policy under import-substituting industrialization disfavoured agriculture and led to a "technological lag" in the sector, and that this explains agriculture's relative decline during a...