This paper reviews a set of issues related to the concept and measurement of regional competitiveness. First, the concept of growth and competitiveness is argued to be different at regional level from the national level. In particular, the relationship between agglomeration and performance, the...

This paper show evidence that firms choose from a much larger set of internationalization modes than usually assumed in the international trade literature and that this choice is governed by similar selection processes than the one proposed by Helpman, Melitz, Yeaple (2004 AER). We rely on a...

Firms cluster their economic activities to exploit technological and informational spillovers from other firms. Spillovers through the entry of multinational firms can be particularly beneficial to domestic firms because of their technological superiority. Yet, the importance of foreign firm's...

Most trade theories assume bilateral trade relationships are forged on the basis of some comparative advantages, scale considerations, market structure or some productivity advantage of firms. Since these factors change slowly, bilateral trade relationships should be stable. However, we argue...

We exploit a panel dataset of Hungarian firms merged with product-level trade data for the period 1992-2003 to investigate the relation between firms' trading activities (importing, exporting or both) and productivity. We find important self-selection effects of the most productive firms induced...

This paper provides a detailed description of Hungarian trade data and key patters drawn at the firm and product level. The IEHAS-CEFiG Hungary dataset is an almost universal panel of balance sheet information (1992-2006) merged with firmproductcountry level customs data (1992-2003) taken until...

Firms may benefit from proximity to each other due to the existence of several externalities. The productivity premia of firms located in agglomerated regions an be attributed to savings and gains from external economies. However, the capacity to absorb information may depend on activities of...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between productivity growth and firm dynamics using firm-level data between 1992 and 2006. Theories emphasising firm-level heterogeneity show that industry-level productivity may not only increase as a consequence of increasing within-firm...

This paper presents the specificities of Hungarian foreign trading firms from different perspectives, like concentration, efficiency and sectoral structure. Hungarian trade is highly concentrated similarly to other countries. Trading firms are more efficient than their non-trading peers,...

The theory of geographical markets is based on the notion that economic activity is not evenly spread and regional inequalities have an impact on the decisions of economic agents. Retail gasoline markets are almost perfect examples of geographical markets. The gasoline sold by the stations is a...