We quantify the effect of foreign investment on productivity of acquired firms using a new firm-level database that tracks foreign ownership changes. To control for endogenous selection on unobserved firm-level characteristics, we study the differential impact of majority and minority foreign...

output volatility at micro and macro levels. Using a very large firm-level dataset (AMADEUS) from 16 European countries, we construct a measure of "deep" financial integration at the regional-level based on observations of foreign ownership at the firm-level. We find a significant positive...

We study the impact of FDI on the productivity of host-country firms. FDI has positive spillovers only when foreign and domestic firms use similar technologies. Channeling FDI to sectors where firms share similar technology would significantly increase productivity spillovers from FDI. We show...

We present new stylized facts on bank and firm leverage for 2000-2009 using extensive internationally comparable micro level data from several countries. The main result is that there was very little buildup in leverage for the average non-financial firm and commercial bank before the crisis,...

We provide empirical evidence that risk sharing enhances specialization in production. First, we calculate an index of specialization for each of the European Community (EC) and non-EC OECD countries, U.S. states, Canadian provinces, Japanese prefectures, Latin American countries, and regions of...

We show empirically that regions with a more specialized production structure exhibit output fluctuations that are less correlated with those of other regions (less \symmetric fluctuations). Combined with the causal relation running from capital market integration to regional specialization...