This paper aims to explain the state of Korea’s manufacturing competitiveness and assess whether the Korean manufacturing industry has acted as an economic support during the COVID-19 pandemic through a cross-country analysis. In addition, this paper identifies what the driving force is behind...

Germany taxes electricity use since 1999. The government granted reduced rates to energy intensive firms in the industrial sector for addressing potentially adverse effects on firms' competitiveness. Firms that use more electricity than certain thresholds established by legislation, pay reduced...

This paper evaluates the intent to treat local average treatment effects of the Colombian apprenticeship contract on manufacturing firm dynamics taking advantage of an exogenous variation generated by the 2002 labor reform and the regulation design. This evaluation is appealing because very...

In many countries, the transition process towards a low-carbon economy has been associated with increasing electricity prices. Microeconometric evaluations of the causal impact of electricity price changes on plant-level outcomes are rare, though. By exploiting local randomization induced by...

The Civil War resulted in a substantial divergence in the regional structure of factor prices. In particular, wages fell in the South relative to the non-South, but interest rates and other measures of the costs of capital increased. Using archival data for manufacturing establishments, we show...