Uncertainty about the level of demand is thought to influence irreversible capacity decisions. This paper examines some implications of the theory literature on this topic in an empirical study of the US cement industry between 1994 and 2006. Firms in this sector have the ability to deliver...

Uncertainty about the level of demand is thought to influence irreversible capacity decisions. This paper examines some implications of the theory literature on this topic in an empirical study of the US cement industry between 1994 and 2006. Firms in this sector have the ability to deliver...

Many industries experience periods of excess capacity. Explanations include firms deterring rivals, anticipating future demand, or the lumpiness of investment. This paper identifies capacity investment intended to deter rivals separately from investment driven by other factors. To achieve this...

This research investigates the hypothesis that publicly funded scientific research complements private R&D investment in the pharmaceutical industry. New microlevel data on public research investment by the U.S. National Institutes of Health allow measures of basic and clinical research in seven...

In this study, we investigate whether U.S. high-technology firms are more or less conditionally conservative relative to low-technology firms. If U.S. high-tech firms are required to expense immediately all R&D costs according to the accounting standard SFAS 2, which reflects unconditional...

This paper studies the productivity impact of heterogeneous capital inputs of selected EU-15 member countries and of the U.S. at the macroeconomic level. The stochastic possibility frontiers approach of Battese and Coelli (1992) applied here is used to identify neutralities or non-neutralities...

The US banking industry offers a unique, natural and fertile environment to study geography's effects on banks' behavior and performance. The literature on banks' operating performance, while extensive, says little about the influence of spatial interactions on banks' performance. We compute and...

We consider the estimation of Cobb-Douglas production functions using panel data covering a large sample of companies observed for a small number of time periods. Standard GMM estimators, which eliminate unobserved firm-specific e¤ects by taking first differences, have been found to produce...

The US banking industry offers a unique, natural and fertile environment to study geography's effects on banks' behavior and performance. The literature on banks' operating performance, while extensive, says little about the influence of spatial interactions on banks' performance. We compute and...

We incorporate arguments from the Tiebout model into the regulatory competition equilibrium and study cross-fertilization in the productivity growth of banks between those in a state and others in this state's neighboring states. Empirically, we focus on two time periods: before (i.e.,...