This paper estimates the impact of inter-sectoral linkages on productivity at the sectoral level. An exhaustive Chinese panel data set for capital, infrastructure and a sectoral agglomeration index is linked with an economic distance matrix derived from inter-sectoral transactions. The latter...

The main rationale for the implementation of structural reforms favoring free markets is that they, through increased competition, are likely to create incentives to improve the way firms operate i.e. firm efficiency. In this study we measure and analyze total factor productivity and technical...

The advent of a growing share of small firms in modern economies raises some intriguing questions. The most intriguing question undoubtedly is why so many smaller firms, which have traditionally been classified as sub-optimal scale firms, can exist. The authors suggest that, through pursuing a...

This paper analyses the decline in unskilled employment in UK manufacturing.

While Germany has a very open, export-oriented manufacturing sector, to date there has been little or no research on the role of exporting in German firm performance. This paper documents the significant differences between exporters and non-exporters and attemps to identify the sources of these...

In this paper, we use firm-level panel data for the manufacturing sector in four African countries, to estimate the effect of exporting on efficiency. Measures of firm-level efficiency using stochastic production frontier models are constructed for the period 1992 to 1995.