Contingency formulations of Human Resource Management (HRM) theory suggest that the effectiveness of HRM practices should vary across firms. This study examined whether the relationship between HRM practices and productivity in manufacturing companies is contingent upon organizational climate and strategic orientation. Information on HRM, organizational structure, and competitive strategy was c...

The paper investigates the effects of international trade in goods and capital movement on the productivity distribution and industry-wide productivity when countries are heterogeneous in the quality of their financial institutions. In autarky, firm heterogeneity in their productivities arises in countries with poor financial institutions, while all firms adopt a high-productivity technology in...

This paper addresses how financial development affects product quality and firmlevel exports depending on the firm’s productivity. To this goal, I propose a heterogeneous firms model with endogenous quality, credit constraints and heterogeneous productivity of a firm. I show theoretically and confirm empirically that lower financial constraints result in higher-quality output and higher exports...

Decision making in companies requires an assessment of the efficiency and productivity of individual inputs to provide insights into the scope for improvement of inputs' use. This paper estimates an inputspecific Luenberger productivity growth indicator that can be decomposed to identify the contributions of input-specific technological change, technical efficiency change and scale efficiency c...

In February 2002, New Orleans endorsed with a 63 percent majority a ballot initiative to establish a citywide minimum wage one dollar above the federal minimum. We surveyed New Orleans businesses in 1999 to estimate this proposal’s costs. We present the main results from this survey. We then evaluate five means through which firms might adjust to cost increases—raising prices, improving product...

In this paper we use micro data on both trade and production for a sample of large Chinese manufacturing firms in the footwear industry from 2002 − 2006 to estimate an empirical model of export demand, pricing, and market participation by destination market. We use the model to construct indexes of firm product quality, productivity, and export market capability. The empirical results indicate ...

Credit has been found to be a catalyst for economic growth, as it spurs investment, enhances productivity, allows costs to be spread out over time, improves resource allocation, and enables investors to cope better with macroeconomic volatility. Most studies focus on the relationship between financial development and growth at the country level, while few analyze the relationship at the firm le...

This paper proposes a new empirical approach to assess the impact of knowledge spillovers on firms' productivity and demand. I consider a model where process innovations spillovers to other firms raise firms relative efficiency and technological diffusion of product innovations enhances firms' demand. By modelling knowledge capital as a function of own investment in R\&D and spillovers, I can c...

This paper assesses the impacts of R&D, export and the presence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on Chinese manufacturing productivity based on a panel data on more than 10,000 indigenous and foreign-invested firms for the period 1998-2001. Indigenous Chinese firms are found to significantly benefit from their own export activities and R&D spillovers. Given some specific characteristics of Ch...

Firm turnover (i.e. firm entry and exit) is a well-recognized source of sectorlevel productivity growth across developing and developed countries. In contrast, the role and importance of firms switching activities from one sector to another is little understood. Firm switchers are likely to be unique both from newly established entrants and exiting firms that close down. We build an empirical m...