This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory on the long-run effects of business cycles using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991--2010. Under this theory, the <italic>share</italic> of productivity-enhancing activities (PEAs), such as R&D investment or on-the-job training, relative to production...

Many studies have established that a small number of firms, known as fast-growth firms or Gazelles, create most of the new jobs. In spite of the importance of this topic from a policy-point of view, most of those studies are descriptive and limited to a comparison of the characteristics of the...

Despite the relevance in terms of policy, we still know little in Spain about where and by whom jobs are created, and how that is affecting the size distribution of firms. The main innovation of this paper is to use a rich database that overcomes the problems encountered by other firm-level...

This paper investigates whether the existence of knowledge spillovers, differences in the capacity of f rms to assimilate them and disparities in some human resource management practices are related with the decision to innovate of Spanish f rms. In order to do this, we employ data from the...

The impact of entry upon market performance depends not only on the number of entries and their size, but also on how long do the firms last. Consequently, there are an increasing number of papers, most of them focused on the United States and restricted to the manufacturing sector, aimed at...

We have constructed a new database aimed at the study of the relation between firm demography and labour productivity, with a large number of Spanish firms from both industry and service sectors. This database allows us to analyze in detail the degree of dispersion and persistence of...

This paper tests the opportunity-cost theory using a panel of Spanish firms during the period 1991-2010. Under this theory, productivity-enhancing activities, such as R&D investment, should increase during downturns because of the fall in their relative cost – in terms of forgone output –....