In Germany, the productivity of professional services, a sector dominated by micro and small firms, declined by 40 percent between 1995 and 2014. This productivity decline also holds true for professional services in other European countries. Using a German firm-level dataset of 700,000...

The study considers a stochastic R&D process where the invented production technologies consist of a large number n of complementary components. The degree of complementarity is captured by the elasticity of substitution of the CES aggregator function. Drawing from the Central Limit Theorem and...

Nishimura et al. (2005) analyze the entry/exit behavior of Japanese firms during the 1990s and find that relatively efficient firms exited while relatively inefficient firms survived during the banking-crisis period of 1996-97. They conclude that the natural selection mechanism (NSM) apparently...

La Provincia Autonoma di Trento (Trentino) è tra le regioni più produttive d'Europa, ma negli ultimi due decenni la crescita della sua produttività è stata stagnante. Di conseguenza, il divario di produttività del Trentino è aumentato di oltre il 20% rispetto a regioni con lo stesso...

The Autonomous Province of Trento (Trentino) is among the most productive regions in Europe, but over the past two decades its productivity growth has stagnated. As a result, the productivity gap of Trentino widened by over 20% compared to regions with the same productivity level in 2000. The...

Europe’s lackluster capacity to generate growth and particularly productivity growth is for a significant part attributable to a subdued capacity to innovate. Policies aimed at boosting growth through research and development have not delivered. Private R&D intensity remains to date low (and...

While being a key sector in all developed economies, retail trade does actually appear to be one of the reasons for Europe’s lagging behind in potential output growth. One of the reasons for this lag could be regulation. By determining conditions for market access and for carrying out a...

This paper discusses the impact of newly created firms on industry productivity growth. Our central hypothesis is that there are two potential effects of new firms on productivity growth: a direct effect, as entrants may be relatively more productive than established firms; and an indirect...

Labour productivity in the United Kingdom has been exceptionally weak since the 2007/08 financial crisis. This paper uses firm-level data from the Office for National Statistics Annual Business Survey and the Inter-Departmental Business Register to better understand the nature of this weakness....

East German manufacturers' revenue productivity (value-added per worker) is some 8 (25) percent below West German levels, even three decades after German unification. Using firm-product-level data containing information on product quantities and prices, we analyse the role of product...