This paper analyzes corporate restructuring and its role in generating labor productivity growth in a sample of large Swedish manufacturing corporations. It is found that external restructuring, including ownership changes, start-ups and closures of plants, accounted for up to 47 percent of the...

This paper raises several issues concerning productivity analysis. An attempt is made to demonstrate the usefulness of a micro-based approach to productivity analysis which challenges some basic assumptions of conventional analyses based on aggregate production functions. With the help of a...

This paper analyses the effects of price and market size variables on the investment propensities in the pulp and paper industry. A panel of 15 European countries in the time period 1984 - 1997 is used in the regression analysis. We find the wages, the US/ECU exchange rate, the price of paper...

The modern manufacturing firm competes with product quality improvements rather than cost efficient production of simpler products. R&D spending, marketing, availability of spare parts and service facilities, customs designs, etc. embody the product quality enhancing process, requiring...

This paper develops a new analytical approach to the old question whether market conditions may influence the internal efficiency of firms. The basic textbook model of the firm is slightly extended to incorporate managers' incentives to reduce production costs in an imperfectly competitive...

Non-periodic fluctuations of production activities are shown to exist in a dynamic von Thunen model for specific conditions of cost and demand.