Using count data on the number of bank failures in US states during the 1960 to 2006 period, this paper endeavors to establish how far sources of economic risk (recessions, high interest rates, inflation) or differences in solvency and branching regulation can explain some of the fragility in...

This paper assesses whether the allocation puzzle - the tendency for capital to flow to countries with relatively low productivity growth - is observed for foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, which should be particularly sensitive to productivity prospects. We look both at aggregate FDI flows...

Import competition from China is pervasive in the sense that for many good categories, the competitive environment that US firms face in these markets is strongly driven by the prices of Chinese imports, and so is their pricing decision. This paper quantifies the effect of the...

This paper extends empirical literature on political economy of intergovernmental transfers to multiparty systems that are typical for most European countries. It proposes and uses new methods of estimating the number of swing voters from survey data. The first method estimates densities at the...

Foreign subsidiary performance and market efficiency effects are estimated and confronted in this paper using a rich firm-level panel for Polish manufacturing. Besides estimating total factor productivity, other performance measures are calculated and contrasted such as labor productivity,...

The impact of innovation on firm performance has been a matter of significant interest to economists and policy makers for decades. Although innovation is generally regarded as a means of improving the competitiveness of firms and their performance on domestic and foreign markets, this...

This paper attempts to quantify the impact of fragmentation on employment. Factor demand functions for labour and intermediates and mark up price equations derived from a Generalized Leontief cost function at industry level are estimated. Import prices and output prices influence the price of...

This paper presents first insights into the role of international outsourcing on the productivity of low-skilled workers in EU manufacturing. Whereas in the short run international outsourcing exhibits a negative marginal effect on real value added per low-skilled worker, the long-run parameter...

The literature on the internationalisation of firms has paid little attention to SMEs. SME-oriented studies are predominantly descriptive or illustrating theoretical arguments, and those dealing with services are mostly confined to specific industries. The paper aims at correcting some of these...