This paper examines variation in a productivity growth within a given location and between different locations. Implementing a dynamic panel data approach on Swedish micro data, we test the separate and complementary effect of innovation and spillovers from the local milieu. Measuring potential...

This paper assesses the contribution to productivity of firms’ internal innovation efforts and spatially-specific factors. A dynamic GMM-estimator is applied to a panel of close to 3,000 firms located in 81 Swedish regions and observed over a 10-year period. The magnitude of benefits from the...

This paper analyzes the relationship between exporters, spin-outs and firm performance. A large body of research has shown that exporters perform better than non-exporters. But are also firms spawn out from exporters better than other new firms in terms of survival, productivity and growth?...

Firms display persistent differences as regards both internal and external characteristics, and these differences correspond to asymmetries in the performance of firms with regard to productivity level and growth as well as innovativeness. This paper focuses on one internal characteristic and...

During a sequence of decades we can observe a co-evolution of globalization through network formation of multinational (MNE) firms and concentration in specific places due to agglomerative forces. First, innovation ideas arrive at a faster speed to firms with past experience of innovation...

Do agglomerations stimulate productivity? An extensive literature on agglomeration economies, or urban increasing returns, has analyzed this question with aggregated spatial data. This paper estimates the relationship between agglomeration and productivity at the firm level using static and...

This paper presents a comprehensive description and analysis of the international trading activities of firms based on novel detailed Swedish data. As a small open economy with a limited domestic market, Sweden constitutes an interesting contrast to existing evidence. We show that much of the...

This paper investigates whether domestic firms’ productivity is an increasing function of imports from the most knowledge intensive economies in the world, i.e. the G7 countries. Using Swedish firm-level data, we confirm an instantaneous causality going from imports to productivity. We also...

This paper investigates how a firm’s R&D strategy influences the firm performance as measured by productivity and profitability. A formal production model is introduced to define and interpret alternative ways of measuring the impact of R&D. Studying 1,767 randomly selected firms from the...

This paper is concerned with the productivity and growth of Swedish exporting firms. Using data on 9,580 manufacturing firms with 10 or more employees for the period 1997-2008, it estimates a dynamic GMM model that captures both the impact of recurrent knowledge investment through innovation and...