The past few decades have witnessed a slowdown in productivity growth in many advanced economies, including Finland. Against this backdrop, this study investigates product switching in Finnish manufacturing firms during the period of 2009-2019. The findings indicate a growing trend towards...

Following the massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the global economy and on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular, the concept of resilience has experienced a renaissance. As an organizational concept, business model resilience describes the extent to which an...

There is a large literature on the role infrastructure plays in economic development, but few papers document the causal effect of infrastructure on the sustainability of natural resources. We examine the effect of the arrival of two new national highways on ground water levels in a small...

The zombie firm literature has typically used datasets that under-represent small firms or includes only listed firms. Past studies for Canada fall into the latter, where they show Canada has the highest zombie share in the world. This paper presents new evidence on the zombie firm phenomenon...

We develop a labor demand model that encompasses pre‑match hiring cost arising from tight labor markets. Through the lens of the model, we study the effect of labor market tightness on firms' labor demand by applying novel Bartik instruments to the universe of administrative employment data on...

Recent evidence indicates that the proportion of manufacturing enterprises undergoing digital transformation and the digital investment made by manufacturing enterprises are increasing, suggesting that digital transformation may affect the production and operation of manufacturing enterprises....

We investigate the effect of the rise in product market competition, measured by the increase in Chinese exports to Mexico and the US, on the productivity of Mexican plants between 1994 and 2007. We use detailed panel data on Mexican manufacturers matched with trade data at the product level....

This paper investigates a unique policy designed to maintain employment during the privatization of East German firms after the fall of the Iron Curtain. The policy required new owners of the firms to commit to employment targets, with penalties for non-compliance. Using a dynamic model, we...

Given the increasing significance of knowledge spillovers in innovation, this study investigates and compares knowledge spillovers from arm’s length firms in the industries (market) with those from other sister firms in the same business group (network). By dividing the knowledge pool into...

This empirical paper documents the relationship between composition of a firm's workforce (with a special focus on age and gender) and its performance (productivity and profitability) for a large representative sample of enterprises from manufacturing industries in Germany. We use unique newly...