Starting from the observation that all firms in Ireland (foreign and domestic in manufacturing and services industries) were hit by the crisis, the paper asks whether there is a difference in the behaviour of foreign and domestic firms. One hypothesis is that foreign multinationals are less...

We use plant output and input prices to decompose the profit margin into four parts: productivity, demand shocks, mark-ups and input costs. We find that each of these market fundamentals are important in explaining plant exit. We then use variation across sectors in tariff changes after the...

This paper investigates the relationship between gender of the CEO and composition of the board of directors (female chairman and share of women in the boardroom) and firm's risk attitudes measured as variability in four firm outcome variables (investments, profits, return to equity, and sales)....

Lenders condition future loans on some index of past performance. Typically, banks condition future loans on repayments of earlier obligations whilst international organizations (official lenders) condition future loans on the implementation of some policy action ('investment'). We build an...

The risk of default that business firms face is very significant and differs widely across countries. This paper explores the links between countries' business conditions and international trade embedment and the default risk at the country level from a theoretical point of view. Our main...

This paper investigates four cohorts of firms from German manufacturing industries that started to export in the years between 1998 and 2002 and follows them over the five years after the start. Export starters are a rare species and they are small on average compared to incumbent exporters....