This paper explores the role of replacement and innovation in shaping investment and productivity during episodes of lumpy adjustment in capital. To this purpose we use a rich firm-level panel of Spanish manufacturing data that combines information on equipment investment and firm's strategies....

This paper investigates the two way relationship between R&D and export activity. In particular, we concern ourselves with the question whether R&D stimulates exports and, perhaps more importantly, whether export activity leads to increasing innovative activity in terms of R&D (learning by...

This article focuses on the measurement of economic efficiency of firms in an industry in a dynamic framework, where R&D investments and learning experience play critical roles. Dynamic aspects of cost and production efficiency and the impact of capital through learning by doing are developed...

This paper provides a description of the dynamic choices of manufacturing plants when they undertake rapid adjustment in output. The focus is on epsodes that involve lumpy adjustment in capital or employment. I examine the behavior of variables such as capital utilization, hours per worker,...

Cost-effective environmental policy generally requires that all emission sources are faced with the same tax. In this paper I discuss how the existence of induced technological change may alter this result, if at least some of the effect is external to the firm. Focusing on learning by doing...

Increasing returns means that self-reinforcing mechanisms are at work within firms and markets. These mechanisms come in four forms: scale effects, learning effects, network effects and social interaction effects. Some industries are more sensitive to increasing returns than others. It is...

In most developed countries, the economic pressure on hospitals to improve their efficiency has increased considerably over the past 30 years. Simple cost reimbursement for hospital care has almost universally been superseded by much more high-powered economic incentive-based systems. These...

During the past two years, private equity funds have acquired substantial portfolios of nonperforming loans from banks in Germany. Typically a private equity investor does not commit funds unless exit strategies are clearly defined. The usual exit strategies for distressed debt investors are fix...