We address the post-entry performance of new Portuguese firms by investigating the structural characteristics survival, using both non-parametric methods and semi-parametric methods, for the seven regions of Portugal (NUT II). We also provide a disaggregated analysis by sector and size class,...

There is strong empirical evidence that countries with lower per capita income tend to have smaller trade volumes even after controlling for aggregate income. Furthermore, poorer countries do not just trade less, but have a lower number of trading partners. In this paper, I construct and...

This paper examines the effect of the two most recent European Union enlargements on CEECs trade of intermediate and final products separately. A theoretically justified gravity model which incorporates the extensive margin of trade and accounts for firm heterogeneity is estimated using highly...

In this paper, we study how contract enforcement at the local level affects a firm's ability to supply customised intermediate inputs to foreign firms. Using Italian firm-level data, we show that firms located in courts with higher judicial trial length in civil disputes, which is our measure of...

I compute distances used in the gravity model of international trade that improve the existing measures along multiple lines and help remedy the border puzzle by up to 50%. I derive a trade cost aggregation that is agnostic to the underlying gravity framework while taking into account the...

We propose a structural alternative to the Economic Complexity Index (ECI, Hidalgo and Hausmann 2009; Hausmann et al. 2011) that ranks countries by their complexity. This ranking is tied to comparative advantages. Hence, it reveals information different from GDP per capita on the deep underlying...

We identify the causal effect of lump-sum severance payments on non-employment duration in Norway by exploiting a discontinuity in eligibility at age 50. We find that a severance payment worth 1.2 months' earnings at the median lowers the fraction re-employed after a year by six percentage...

We introduce a dynamic treatment to the mixed proportional hazard competing risks model and allow for selection on unobservables. Our model can e.g. be used to evaluate the effect of benefit sanctions on the transition rate out of unemployment when more than one exit risk is of interest....

We analyze the timing of birth of the first three children based on German panel data (GSOEP) within a hazard rate framework. A random effects estimator is used to accommodate correlation across spells. We consider the role of human capital - approximated by a Mincer-type regression - and its...