This paper compares the wage cost and productivity differentials between Belgium and Portugal, being the EU benchmarks for high and low labor costs, with those in the three leading emerging economies of Central and Eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. To this end we use firm...

This paper uses a unique representative firm level data set to analyse the effect of domestic and international competitive pressure and ownership changes in three emerging economies, Bulgaria Poland and Romania. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: Domestic competitive pressure,...

This paper estimates how anti-dumping (AD) protection affects the market power of firms. To this end, we use a rich panel data set of 1,666 EU producers that were involved in AD cases initiated in 1996 to estimate markups of price over marginal cost. Our findings indicate that markups in most...

Policy-making institutions such as the European Commission, the ECB and the OECD often use unit labor costs as a measure of international competitiveness. The goal of this paper is to examine how well this measure is related to international export performance at the firm level. To this end, we...

How strong are strategic complementarities in price setting across firms? In this paper, we provide a direct empirical estimate of firm price responses to changes in prices of their competitors. We develop a general framework and an empirical identification strategy to estimate the elasticities...

How strong are strategic complementarities in price setting across firms? In this paper, we provide a direct empirical estimate of firms' price responses to changes in prices of their competitors. We develop a general framework and an empirical identification strategy to estimate the...