This paper develops a framework for evaluating the social returns to infrastructure investments that intensify product market competition. We use a circular model with asymmetric production costs both for incumbent firms and potential entrants, where unit transport cost measures the intensity of...

This paper presents a simple model for analysing the contribution of investments in physical and institutional infrastructure to the transition process. In addition to the direct cost savings, infrastructure investment generates important indirect effects, or transition impacts. The model shows...

Support for R&D subsidies relies on empirical evidence that R&D "spills over" between firms. But firm performance is affected by two countervailing R&D spillovers: positive effects from technology spillovers and negative business stealing effects from R&D by product market rivals. We develop a...

This paper explores the economic factors which determine the variation of research effort across firms. The intra-industry coefficient of variation of research intensity is much larger than those of traditional factors. We show that this important fact is consistent with the theoretical argument...

Studies of firm-level data have shown that there is a huge dispersion of productivity across firms even when industries are narrowly defined. So there is a significant opportunity for the least productive firms to catch up to the most productive. The formers’ convergence could therefore...

We estimate the impacts of an energy tax – the Climate Change Levy (CCL) – on the manufacturing sector using panel data from the UK production census. Our identification strategy builds on the comparison of trends in outcomes between plants subject to the CCL and plants that were granted an...

Over the next decade, the European Union will face multiple challenges in assuring growth and jobs, the response to which will call for a re-casting of the framework for the co-ordination of employment policy at EU level. Some of these challenges will arise from known drivers of change, while...

While recent research has explored the phenomenon of drug parallel trade in regulated environments such as the European Union (EU), or the European Economic Area, little is known about the mechanisms that explain its origin or the role of the distribution chain in exporting and importing...

The growth and development of the United States’ non-profit sector in its service and civil society capacities could not have taken the course it did by relying solely on private voluntary contributions. Within the US non-profit sector, there few large “pure” non-profit service providers...

The present study explores the relationship between perceived organizational support and health support from supervisors and workmates, and ‘safety citizenship behaviour’ (SCB) in offshore employees. It is hypothesised that high levels of support reflecting care in the organization about...