This paper investigates the link between competition and efficiency for the Hungarian corporate sector during various phases of the transition process. We employ frontier production functions to explore differences among groups of firms, and to identify the typical adjustment process of each...

Many empirical papers tested the theoretical predictions of Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (HMY, 2004) which sorts firms at different internationalization states according to their productivity levels. While these papers ignore the fact, that the theoretical predictions of HMY only apply to firms...

Based on a panel data set of Japanese manufacturing firms in research-intensive industries, we investigate quantitatively the extent to which debt outstandings in the 90s affected the firm’s R&D activities. We find that massive debt outstandings had significantly negative effect on R&D...

This paper studies the direct effect of foreign investment on target firm operating performance and growth. Foreign-invested firms grow in size but not in productivity compared with non-invested firms over a four-year horizon. Decomposing foreign investment into foreign direct investment and...

From an empirical perspective, this paper critically examines the concepts of returns to scale (RTS) and economies of scale (EOS), and argues that the concept of EOS is more relevant and broader enough to exhibit proper scale economies behavior of firms. Two approaches, i.e., production function...

The decision of companies to enter international markets, either via exports or foreign direct investment (FDI), has been postulated by the self-sorting model of Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (HMY, 2004). In the strict sense, the theoretical predictions of HMY only apply to firms that become...

This paper investigates the relationship between firm heterogeneity and a firm's decision to export, using the annual survey of Thai manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2004. A significant contribution of this paper is that we are, for the first time, able to break down FDI by country of origin to...

This paper, instrumented with six theorems, shows that differences between firms in labor productivity, capital intensity and relative demand for skilled labor can be explained by differences in the substitution parameters between capital, skilled and unskilled labor in the presence of skill...

We develop a simple test to assess whether horizontal spillover effects from multinational to domestic firms are endogenous to the market structure generated by the incremental entry of the same multinationals. In particular, we analyze the performance of a panel of 10,650 firms operating in...

This study presents recently available data on the microstructure of Dutch exports and the relation between export participation and productivity at the firm and establishment-level. We test whether recent theories of international trade with heterogeneous firms can explain the patterns in the...