Using data from the Community Innovation Survey for Belgium in two consecutive periods, this paper explores the relationship between firm-level innovation activities and the propensity to start exporting. To measure innovation, we include indicators of both innovative effort (R&D activities) as...

We use Belgianfirm-level data over the period 1996-2007 to analyze the impact of im- ports from China and other low-wage countries onfirm growth, exit, and skill upgrading in manufacturing. For this purpose we use both industry-level andfirm-level imports by country of origin and distinguish...

Europe's industrial base needs to undergo a swift and persistent transformation towards carbon neutrality and circularity, but this transition must happen in a fair and socially just manner. In this working paper, we evaluate the support mechanisms for heavy industry which have been put in place...

We estimate the effect of demand and price uncertainty on firms' investment decisions from a panel of manufacturing firms. Uncertainty measures are derived from firms' subjective qualitative expectations. They are close to their theoretical counterparts, the variances of future demand and price...

Europe has witnessed the last decade an accelerated process of economic integration. Trade barriers were removed, the euro was introduced and ten new member states entered the European Union. Economic integration is likely to have an impact on both labor and product markets. Unlike most other...

One of the most important predictions made in recent international trade literature based on heterogeneous firms concerns the within-industry job reallocation from firms not involved in international markets to those that are. This paper quantifies the extent of this reallocation using a dataset...

We use Belgian firm-level data over the period 1996-2007 to analyze the impact of imports from China and other low-wage countries on firm growth, exit, and skill upgrading in manufacturing. For this purpose we use both industry-level and firm-level imports by country of origin and distinguish...

We provide an analysis of the 2008-2009 trade collapse using microdata from a small open economy, Belgium. First, we find that changes in firm-country-product exports and imports occurred mostly at the intensive margin: the number of firms, the average number of destination and origin markets...

New empirical and theoretical work has highlighted the importance of multi-product firms in international tradeflows. We examine multi-product exporters in the small open economy of Belgium, considering their importance and the relationship between the margins of trade and firm productivity,...

We use a unique longitudinal dataset that tracks the exporting behavior of Belgian manufacturing firms between 1997 and 2009. We ask how slack resources, including financial and human resource slack, influence firms’ exporting behavior. Our findings suggest that both types of slack resources...