This paper looks at the restructuring of European electricity markets that has been taking place since the 1990s. This liberalisation process, driven largely by EU legislation aiming to create a single market for electricity, has led to significant changes in how electricity markets in member...

This research explores the relationship between laws that discriminate on the basis of gender and the probability that a female-owned business begins operating in the informal sector. This is achieved by tracing the origins of formal businesses surveyed in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys and...

This research analyzes the evolution of maternity and paternity leave across the world, covering 190 countries over 52 years. The data show striking differences both within and between countries in how leave distribution for parents upon the birth of a child has evolved. The study finds that,...

We compare the performance in employment, wages and productivity for domestic plants acquired by new domestic and foreign owners. Prospective foreign owners pick large, high-wage, high-productivity plants, while new domestic owners choose average performers of above-average size. Employment,...

We estimate the effects of adopting DSL broadband on firm productivity and productivity growth allowing for differing broadband speeds. We use a two-stage least squares estimator with geographical broadband availability as an instrument to address some potential endogeneity problems in a panel...

type="main" xml:id="twec12120-abs-0001" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>This paper examines whether domestic firms benefit from the pro-competitive effects of imports from abroad and from the presence of foreign-owned firms in the host country in three Irish market-services sectors between 2001 and 2007. Grouping the...</p>

Foreign direct investment is considered an important source of knowledge spillovers. We argue that the effects of foreign presence on host-country productivity may differ depending on the mode of foreign entry. Using a long panel from the Norwegian Manufacturing Census, we find that greenfield...

This paper examines firm heterogeneity in terms of size, wages, capital intensity, and productivity between domestic and foreign-owned firms that engage in intra-firm trade, firms that export and import, firms that import only, and firms that export only. As previously documented, heterogeneity...

We analyse common stylized facts of services firms engaged in trade in a comparative study across four EU member countries. We find that, though relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms, services firms have similar traits. Services firms are more likely to import than to export....

We establish a set of stylised facts for trade and trading firms in five market services sectors using comparable firm-level and services data from four EU countries. Our analysis shows that exports account for much lower shares of overall sales in the services sectors than in manufacturing. In...