The study aims at describing productivity growth in the manufacturing sector for a selected panel of five European countries using firm-level data. The paper explores the empirical regularities of firm productivity distribution across countries. In particular, we assess the degree of persistence...

Using firm-level data for Belgium over the period 1997-2005, we evaluate the elasticity of firms' labour and real average labour compensation to microeconomic total factor productivity (TFP). Our results may be summarised as follows. First, we find that the elasticity of average labour...

This paper investigates the effects of the workforce age structure on the productivity of large Belgian firms. More precisely, it examines different scenarios of changes in the proportion of young (16-29 years), middle-aged (30-49 years) and old (more than 49 years) workers and their expected...

We prove that the change in welfare of a representative consumer is summarized by the current and expected future values of the standard Solow productivity residual. The equivalence holds if the representative household maximizes utility while taking prices parametrically. This result justifies...

This paper investigates the impact of wage dispersion on firm productivity in different working environments. More precisely, it examines the interaction with: i) the skills of the workforce, using a more appropriate indicator than the standard distinction between white- and blue collar workers,...

Many studies investigate the relationship between R&D expenditures as an input and patents as an intermediate product or output of a knowledge production function. We suggest that the productivity of research in patent production functions has been underestimated in the literature, as scholars...

Labour economists typically assume that pay differences between occupations can be explained with variations in productivity. The empirical evidence on the validity of this assumption is surprisingly thin and subject to various potential biases. The authors use matched employer-employee panel...

We prove that the change in welfare of a representative consumer is summarized by the current and expected future values of the standard Solow productivity residual. The equivalence holds if the representative household maximizes utility while taking prices parametrically. This result justifies...

We provide first evidence regarding the direct impact of educational mismatch on firm productivity. To do so, we rely on representative linked employer-employee panel data for Belgium covering the period 1999-2006. Controlling for simultaneity issues, time-invariant unobserved workplace...

The process of the East-West integration has come to a point that enlargement appears inevitable. But are these countries really ready to join the EU in tfirms of competitive perfirmance? Firstly, we construct a virtual best practice production frontier for firms active in a European Union...