Because of the booming economy, interest in China has soared in recent years. The government has decided to privatize many state-owned enterprises (SOEs), so foreigners can much more easily invest in existing firms than ever before. Is it wise to consider investing in these SOEs? Certainly, many have major problems. How sophisticated are Chinese manufacturing firms? Do they understand modern pr...

We present a new approach for the empirical investigation of agglomeration patterns. We examine the clustering of manufacturing firms by identifying patterns of spatial network formation that deviate from randomly generated networks. Using firm-level panel data from Vietnam we calculate transitivity, a measure to determine the strength of clustering of manufacturing firms. We then test whether ...

World economic recession, globalization of business environment and advances in technologies pushing manufacturing firms for the adoption of outsourcing strategy in their product development processes. Nowadays, firms are realizing that being alone in product development process do not provide them any differentiation in their production lines. The objectives of such approach are not only for c...

This paper analyzes the relationship between factor substitutability and the energy intensity of manufacturing firms. Specifically, we compare the degree of substitutability between the input factors capital, labor, energy, and material for firms with low, medium, and high energy cost shares using a panel of Swiss manufacturing companies covering the period from 1997 to 2008. Our findings indic...

This paper re-examines the impact of a firm’s outward foreign direct investemnt on its R&D spending in the home country with propensity score matching method. Employing firm-level panel data on Taiwan’s manufacturing firms covering 1987-2003, this paper first demonstrates that firms with firm-specific and ownership advantages are more likely to undertake overseas inverstment. Controlling for ou...

This paper uses data from the European Regional Innovation Survey to provide insights into the innovative activity and innovation networking of the most important innovation actors, namely manufacturing firms, producer service firms, and research institutes. The innovation capacity of the metropolitan innovation systems differ markedly. In respect to cooperation partners, vertical relationships...

This field study examines the performance implications of CEO succession plans and compensation perceptions in a sample of single-business manufacturing firms. Zajac (1990) tested these relationships in his "CEO-issues model of firm performance" using a sample of the largest U.S. corporations. Our study replicates Zajac's (1990) earlier work, but uses a sample of CEOs who head smaller, single-b...

In order to catch up with the technological frontier, firms, especially in developing countries, try to acquire technological advancement through internal R&D efforts as well as through external technology sourcing activities. This study tests the existence of a complementarity between in-house R&D and external technology acquisition in Chinese manufacturing firms. We show that the two sources ...

Plant shutdowns shape industry productivity, the dynamics of employment, and industrial restructuring. Plant closures account for more than half of gross job destruction in U.S. manufacturing. This paper examines the effects of firm structure on U.S. manufacturing plant closures. Plants belonging to multiplant firms and those owned by U.S. multinationals are less likely to exit. However, the su...

In this general equilibrium framework, the transportation sector is modeled as a distinct sector with increasing returns. A more advanced technology has a higher fixed cost but a lower marginal cost of production. Even with both manufacturing firms and transportation firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose technologies optimally, the model is tractable and results are derived analy...