Technical standards in telecommunications - the central focus of this paper - were traditionally developed by official government accredited or intergovernmental organizations. In the last two decades, however, private forums and consortia of standardization have evolved which initiated a shift...

This paper starts from the stylized fact that firm size and exporting tends to be positively related. Using large sets of establishment panel data for three different industries from official statistics evidence is presented that the familiar picture of an export/sales ratio that ceteris paribus...

Recent studies of border effects have focused on the intra-country and inter-country comparison of trade flows. It is found that borders have a negative impact on the size of cross-border trade. In order to estimate border effects on a regional level one needs not only data on inter-country but...

During the past two decades, international trade in telecommunication services has significantly intensified. What is more, an increasing number of telecommunications operators have begun to expand their activities beyond national borders through FDIs, joint ventures, and cooperation agreements....

This paper discusses the nature, importance, and measurement of non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in services trade with particular reference to telecommunications services. It is shown that although more effectively addressed for the telecom sector at the multilateral level than for other service...

The objectives of this paper are to study the impact of liberalisation on trade deficits and current accounts of developing countries. It is expected that trade liberalisation would promote economic growth from the supply side by leading to a more efficient use of resources, by encouraging...

This paper uses a dataset on the foreign activities by Swedish manufacturing firms to examine the performance of German affiliates compared with affiliates in other locations. It is found that German affiliates, on average, have higher labour productivity, R&D expenditure per employee and...

A basic result of new economic geography (NEG) models is that the proximity to consumer markets impacts wages and employment within regions. The ongoing process of European integration, being targeted on the reduction of barriers to trade and factor mobility, has presumably changed relative...

This article examines the location choices of cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) between OECD members´ firms in the 1990`s. In addition to traditional determinants of FDI, we estimate the impact of specific factors affecting the M&A location pattern. Two distinct econometric methods...

As the process of globalisation of the world economy progresses, the degree of international competition among enterprises increases as well. Yet not all industries or branches are affected to the same extent by this development. One of the most important factors which determine the degree of...