This paper tests some of the predictions of recent advances in trade theory that have focused on different trade patterns of firms within the same sector. Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (2005) develop a model in which innate productivity differences between firms determine the degree of...

Based on a panel data set of Japanese manufacturing firms in research-intensive industries, we investigate quantitatively the extent to which debt outstandings in the 90s affected the firm's R&D activities. We find that massive debt outstandings had significantly negative effect on R&D...

This article examines the role of the interaction between product market and labor market imperfections in determining total factor productivity growth (TFPG). Embedding Dobbelaere and Mairesse's (2009) generalization of Hall's (1990) approach, allowing for the possibility that wages are...

This paper examines the influence of environmental factors on technical, cost, scale and revenue efficiency of German savings banks in 2001-2005. Taking into account growing regional disparities in economic wealth and population size, it differentiates between declining and growing regions....

Aufgrund der starken regionalen Verankerung kann bei den Sparkassen ein besonderes Interesse an den Folgen des demographischen Wandels und speziell von Alterung und Abwanderung vermutet werden. Dabei sind die Sparkassen nicht nur über das Regionalprinzip eng mit einer bestimmten Region...

In the large literature on firm performance, economists have given little attention to entrepreneurs. We use deaths of more than 500 entrepreneurs as a source of exogenous variation, and ask whether this variation can explain shifts in firm performance. Using longitudinal data, we find large and...