Trading in futures markets has grown substantially for many commodities. At the same time the power of many dominant producers has weakened and core prices have tended to fall towards those on the fringe. Existing cartel/fringe models fail to explain the difference between core and fringe prices...

Why have skill shortages continue to persist despite increases in training and the skill levels of the workforce? We argue that technical progress has raised the demand for skilled labour to match the observed increase in supply. We provide econometric evidence in support of this hypothesis,...

In this paper, the authors study how firms react to demand shocks, examining how different aspects of flexibility shape their responses. Their main findings are that very few firms choose to adjust to price in response to a demand shock and that firms with more flexibility are more likely to...

We document the role of small firms in explaining the growth of the skilled/unskilled wage premium in UK manufacturing over the 1980s. Our major findings are (i) the share of manufacturing employment in small firms' (0-99) employees has risen by 35 percent over this period; (ii) small firms pay...

Case study evidence suggests that exporting firms learn from their clients. But econometric evidence, mostly using exporting and TFP growth, is mixed. We use a UK panel data set with firm-level information on exporting and productivity. Our innovation is that we also have direct data on the...

This paper looks at the channels through which intangible assets affect productivity. The econometric analysis exploits a new dataset on intangible investment (INTAN-Invest) in conjunction with EUKLEMS productivity estimates for 10 EU member states from 1998 to 2007. We find that (a) the...

We present a harmonized data set on intangible investment for a number of EU countries and an analysis of growth.