The paper estimates agglomeration-effects for France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK. Estimation takes into account endogeneity of the spatial distribution of employment and spatial fixed-effects. Empirical results suggest that agglomeration-effects in these European countries are only...

As a result of debt enforcement problems, many high-productivity firms in emerging economies are unable to pledge enough future profits to their creditors and this constrains the financing they can raise. Many have argued that, by relaxing these credit constraints, reforms that strengthen...

This study investigates the productivity differences and its sources across a set of banks during the last years of the liberal era of the Spanish banking system (1900-1914). These years were characterised by major qualitative and quantitative changes in the banking industry including a sharp...

We estimate the effect of international trade on average labor productivity at the country level. Our empirical approach relies on summary measures of trade that, we argue, are preferable on both theoretical and empirical grounds to the one conventionally used. In contrast to the marginally...

We employ a non-parametrical approach to growth accounting (Data Envelopment Analysis, DEA) to disentangle the proximate sources of labour productivity growth in 41 nations between 1929 and 1950 by decomposing productivity growth into four components: technological change; efficiency catch-up...

Understanding the mechanism through which financial globalization affect economic performance is crucial for evaluating the costs and benefits of opening financial markets. This paper is a first attempt at disentangling the effects of financial integration on the two main determinants of...

We develop an equilibrium search-matching model with risk-neutral agents and two-sided ex-ante heterogeneity. Unemployment insurance has the standard effect of reducing employment, but also helps workers to get a suitable job. The predictions of our simple model are consistent with the...

In analyzing the distinctive contribution of foreign subsidiaries and domestic firms to productivity growth in aggregate Belgian manufacturing, this paper shows that foreign ownership is an important source of firm heterogeneity affecting productivity dynamics. Foreign firms have contributed...

While papers such as Akerlof and Yellen (1990) and Rabin (1993) argue that psychological considerations such as fairness and reciprocity are important in individual decision-making, there is little explicit empirical evidence of reciprocal altruism in economic environments. This paper tests...