Patterns of correlation in innovation and contractual practices among manufacturing firms in Ethiopia and Sudan are documented. Network data that indicate whether any two firms in the utilized sample do business with each other, buy inputs from a common supplier, or sell output to a common...

Fixed costs associated with learning about demand and setting up distribution networks are expected to be lower when there are more potential contacts in the destination market, suggesting a greater probability of market entry and larger export revenues. The authors match historically-determined...

This paper shows that networked trade in parts and components is more sensitive to the importing country's logistics performance than is trade in final goods. In the baseline specification, the difference between the two trade semi-elasticities is around 45 percent, which suggests that the...

In a seminal contribution, Yi (2003) has shown that vertically specialized trade should be more sensitive to changes in trade costs than regular trade. Yet empirical evidence of this remains remarkably scant. This paper uses data from China's processing trade regime to analyze the role of trade...

Business and politicians' interaction is pervasive but has mostly been analyzed with a binary approach, i.e. either a firm is connected to a politician or not. Yet the network dimensions of such connections are ubiquitous. This paper uses use a unique data set for seven economies that documents...

This paper explores various strategic options available to Japanese firms faced with the increasing market pressures in the global economy. Whether Japanese firms are able to retain the competitive edge will depend on the continuing gains in their manufacturing capability, their capacity to...

The authors apply a Heckman selection model to the 2003 Investment Climate Survey (ICS) to investigate supply-side constraints to export performance at the firm level in Ecuador. To correct for the non-random truncation problems, they use the Heckman selection model to estimate the probability...

Production networks have been at the heart of the recent growth in trade among East Asian countries. Fragmentation trade, reflected mainly in the trade in parts and components, is expanding more rapidly than the conventional trade in final goods. This is mainly due to the relatively more...