Is the reputation of a firm tradable when the change in ownership is observable?We consider a competitive market in which a share of owners must retire ineach period. New owners bid for the firms that are for sale. Customers learn theowners type, which reflects the quality of the good or service...

We test whether firms with a single bank are better shielded from loss of credit and investment cutsin periods of adverse cash flow shocks than firms with multiple bank relationships. Our estimatesof the cash flow sensitivity of investment show that both types of firms are equally subject...

This paper estimates the impact of registering for taxes on firm profits in Bolivia, the countrywith the highest levels of informality in Latin America. A new survey of micro and small firmsenables us to control for a rich set of measures of owner ability and business motivations thatcan affect...

We model decisions with respect to formality or informality for entrepreneurs in a newindustry for a developing economy. We show that informality allows a leader to explore,without significant sunk costs, the potential profitability of the industry; that is, informality maybe a stepping stone,...

This paper examines international technology transfers using firm-level data across 43developing countries. Our findings show that exporting and importing activities are importantchannels for the transfer of technology...

On December 9, 1999, Yves Cizaire, manager of MIS, had just returned from a steering committeemeeting where a difficult decision had been made. After having successfully implemented SAP´sERP software package R/3 in the head office and two distribution centers using a phasedimplementation...

Government policy emphasises five ‘drivers’ of productivity: competition, enterprise, innovation, investment and skillsand each of these has been the subject of major programmes of reform (HM Treasury, 2006). Despite this, andnotwithstanding some improvement, UK productivity in terms of output...

This study explores individual and country-level environmental drivers of informal “seed” investment. We examine four types of informal investors based on business ownership experience (or no such experience) and close family relationship with investee (or no such relationship): “classic love...

Using unique new data and a recently introduced non-linear decomposition technique this paper shows that the huge difference in the propensity to export between West and East German plants is to a large part due to differences in firm size human capital intensity..

Motivated by differences in New-firm survival across regions, this paper explores the impact of regional human capital on New-firm survival rates. New-firm survival is interpreted through formation rates of surviving versus closed firms in the sevice sector...