Are some management practices akin to a technology that can explain company and national productivity, or do they simply reflect contingent management styles? We collect data on core management practices from over 11,000 firms in 34 countries. We find large cross-country differences in the...

Economists have long puzzled over the astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. For example, looking at disaggregated data on U.S. manufacturing industries, Syverson (2004a) found that plants at the 90th percentile produced four times as much as the plant in the 10th...

This paper aims to investigate the effect of knowledge characteristics on the total factor productivity of firms developing drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. We decompose knowledge into knowledge associated with the technological firm portfolio and knowledge related to R&D projects, which...

Economists have long puzzled why there are such astounding differences in productivity between firms and countries. For example, looking as disaggregated data on U.S. manufacturing industries, Syverson (2004a) found that plants at the 90th percentile produced four times as much as the plant in...

This paper assesses the productivity puzzle critically and gives an outlook on the COVID-19 crisis. It offers two main conclusions. First, it posits that a large fraction of the productivity puzzle can be solved by incorporating intangible capital into the asset boundary of the national...

In this article we analyze the determinants and the export trend of European countries of medium and high technology products. The data were analyzed using various econometric models, namely WLS, Pooled OLS, Dynamic Panel, Panel Data with Fixed Effects, Panel Data with Random Effects. The...

This paper empirically investigates the economic effects of environmental activities. To be specific, it investigates the interactive influence of firms’ environmental management and environmental innovation on their productivity. We consider both internal and external environmental management...

This paper examines the idea that the USA has outshined Europe in the race for new medicines as a result of a flight of business R&D expenditure to the USA. It adopts a methodology that accounts for R&D price inflation, considers the role of both ‘performed' R&D and ‘extra-mural' R&D, and...

This paper surveys what we know about international R&D spillovers, with a particular attention devoted to the business literature that link the R&D internationalization to economic performance. Despite the fact that there is a large literature on the internationalization of R&D at the country...

The paper investigates the impact that the multinational scope of firms' activities can have on their productivity. First, we argue that such an impact is both direct and indirect, and that the latter is channelled through higher incentives to invest in R&D. Second, we posit that the composition...