We measure the impact of a drastic new technology for producing steel -- the minimill -- on the aggregate productivity of U.S. steel producers, using unique plant-level data between 1963 and 2002. We find that the sharp increase in the industry's productivity is linked to this new technology,...

In this article, we introduce an empirical framework to analyze how firm performance is affected by increased globalization. Using this framework, we discuss recent work on measuring the impact of various shocks firms face in the global marketplace, such as reductions in trade costs (through...

This paper examines how prices, markups and marginal costs respond to trade liberalization. Multi-product firms are used in the study. [BREAD WP No. 418].

We investigate the role of dynamic production inputs and their associated adjustment costs in shaping the dispersion of static measures of capital misallocation within industries (and countries). Across nine data sets spanning 40 countries, we find that industries exhibiting greater time-series...

We evaluate the impact of international competition on firm-level perfor- mance in Belgium. In the manufacturing sector we consider both the impact of global competition through measures of import penetration and the impact of within-EU competitiveness using measures of relative labor cost. In...

In this paper, we develop a method to estimate markups using plant-level production data. Our approach relies on cost-minimizing producers and the existence of at least one variable input of production. The suggested empirical framework relies on the estimation of a production function and...

The process of the East-West integration has come to a point that enlargement appears inevitable. But are these countries really ready to join the EU in terms of competitive performance? Firstly, we construct a virtual best practice production frontier for .rms active in a European Union member...