This study examines the extent to which national culture and legal systems influence corporate governance practices. National culture is taken to be the customs and practices that are associated with a particular country. The meaning and derivation of national culture will be discussed further...

In the world that we now live in, never has mankind been forced to deal with living and operating business as usual in a carbon constrained world. The essence of the phrase ‘business as usual' now takes on a new meaning when it is imperative in the 21st century and beyond that business does go...

This paper examines the determinants of international competitiveness at the level of sectors and firms. First, we address the relation between cost-related and technological competition in a sample of fifteen OECD countries. Results suggest that the countries' sectoral market shares are indeed...

How do exporters expand their product scope and geographical presence? We argue that new exporters are uncertain about their profitability in different countries and products, but learn it as they start to export. As a consequence, exporters add products and countries sequentially, in an...

Many countries in Africa suffer high rates of underemployment or low rates of productive employment; many also anticipate large numbers of people to enter the workforce in the near future. This paper asks the question: Are African firms creating fewer jobs than those located elsewhere? And, if...

Using the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) data from 2006-2017 on 130,000 firms in 130 countries across the globe, we document that women-led firms tend to underperform men-led firms. The main contribution of this work is to shed light on three mechanisms that help explain the...

We analyze a large merger in the Dutch banking market during the financial crisis using disaggregated data. Based on a merger simulation model, we evaluate merger-induced changes in the interest rates for savings accounts. We find that the merging banks decreased interest rates by 3 to 5 percent...

Although global value chain (GVCs) participation in Southeast Asia has been growing, little is known about whether the benefits from participation are accruing to larger firms or if small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up the majority of companies and employ the bulk of the...