This article outlines work in progress on a study of technological choice in the context of North-South development. Its main purpose is to describe the methodology being developed in the pilot phase of the study. This is of interest because it links together a number of analytic...

European business services has witnessed about two decades of virtual productivity stagnation. The paper investigates whether this is caused by weak dynamic market selection. The time pattern of scale-related inefficiencies is used as an indicator for the effectiveness of market selection. We...

The paper tests the role of agglomeration effects on the export decision of services firms. Recent theories on trade with heterogeneous firms predict that export participation goes along with sunk market-entry costs. Only the more productive firms will be able to overcome these sunk costs. This...

The sector business services contributes directly and indirectly to aggregate economic growth in Europe. The direct contribution comes from the sector’s own dynamism. Though the business-services industry appears to be characterised by strong cyclical volatility, there was also a strong...

The paper investigates whether the self-selection hypothesis and other predictions from the heterogeneous-firms trade models can explain the export participation patterns for Dutch firms in manufacturing and services. The results provide strong support for the self-selection hypothesis,...

The paper investigates whether scale effects, market structure, and regulation determine the poor productivity performance of the European business services industry. We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to estimate the productivity frontier and subsequently explain the distance of...

Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

This paper and appendices report an ongoing study of the interrelationships between technology, income distribution and other socio-economic issues in a long term global context. The present paper therefore describes the work in progress on a project to be completed by July 1980. The aim here is...

This article describes the macroeconomic model used in an ongoing study of technology policies and North-South relations. Other aspects of the study have been described elsewhere [1,2]. We examine here the rationale for the theoretical structure used in the model, the details of the equations,...

Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...