The paper presents a new framework to assess firm level heterogeneity and to study the rate and direction of technical change. Building on the analysis of revealed short-run production functions by Hildenbrand (1981), we propose the (normalized) volume of the zonotope composed by vectors-firms...

This paper examines the relationship between the use of advanced technologies such as ICT, and outcomes such as productivity, the skill mix of the workforce and wages using micro data for the U.S. and Germany. We find support to the idea that U.S. businesses engage in experimentation in a...

To what extent has input reallocation contributed to aggregate productivity growth in the banking sectors of Europe and the United States? Interestingly, under-performing banks capture market share, while more productive banks lose market share, in particular in the US. The pattern of...

While the economic theory predicts that developing countries will gain the most from technology spillovers, there have been only a few analyses looking at this question empirically. The present study focuses on a panel of 27 transition and 20 Western European countries between 1990 and 2006 and...

This paper explores how firms' skills and organizational change affect the returns from investments in ICT. Our work contributes to the literature by testing the hypothesis of complementarity in a panel of 540 Italian manufacturing firms during 1995-2000. By drawing on different statistical...

This paper investigates the time-path of efficiency and productivity change in the case of the Romanian cement industry 1966-1989. The analysis is based on different specifications of stochastic frontier models. The efficiency scores and the time paths of efficiency and technical change are...

Firm performance may be enhanced by linkages with academic institutions, other firms, and foreign markets that confer knowledge spillovers as well as internal R&D that creates firm-specific knowledge. In particular, firm productivity and innovation may be enhanced by positive externalities from...

We estimate firm–level idiosyncratic risk in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Our proxy for risk is the volatility of the portion of growth in sales or TFP which is not explained by either industry – or economy–wide factors, or firm characteristics systematically associated with growth...