This paper examines whether receipt of an RSA grant has a causal impact on plant TFP. To tackle the problem of self-selection into the treatment group, propensity score matching is employed. In order to control for the endogeneity of other variables in the model, estimations are performed using the system GMM estimator. The results show that for low technology manufacturing, receipt of an RSA g...

We propose a difference-in-differences (DiD) approach to estimate the impact of incentives on cost reduction. We show theoretically, and estimate empirically, that German electricity distribution system operators (DSOs) incur higher costs when subject to a loweredpowered regulation mechanism. The difference is particularly significant (about 7%) for firms in the upper quartile of the efficiency...

This document contains a report on the work carried out by the ASPeCT project on the local authentication of users to their UIMs using speaker verification techniques. It includes a summary of the technical approach, a description of the demonstrator and concludes with the results and ideas for further work. provides a report on Deliverable D24. The report on the low storage speaker verificatio...

We explore the relation between the establishment of a regulatory agency and the performance of the electricity sector. We exploit a dataset comprising firmlevel information on a representative sample of 220 electric utilities from 51 development countries for the period 1985 to 2005. Our results indicate that regulatory agencies are associated with more efficient firms and with higher social w...

How does rural-urban migration shape urban production in developing countries? We use longitudinal data on Chinese manufacturing firms between 2000 and 2006, exploit exogenous variation induced by agricultural income shocks for identification. find that, when immigration increases, becomes more labor intensive productivity declines. investigate the reorganization of using patent applications pr...

This note generalizes analytical relationships among activity variables of DEA models previously derived by Boussemart, Briec and Leleu (2007). We relax the asumption of constant returns to scale by showing that the key results hold under a weaker asumption of homogeneity. We use the notion of α -returns to scale to extend the analysis to strictly increasing and decreasing returns, covering now...

The impact of weaning age and/or supplemental liquid feed in the farrowing pen on pre- and post-weaning intake was investigated. systems consisted a milk replacer from day 2, changed to cereal-based 12 days after birth. By continuing with same post-weaning, but dry form, we hypothesised that change would be less abrupt increase post-weaning. study 24 sows their litters 2 × factorial design. des...

We study how opening to trade affects economic growth in a model where heterogeneous firms can adopt new technologies already use by other their home country. characterize the rate using summary statistic of profit distribution: mean-min ratio. Opening increases spread through increased export opportunities and foreign competition, induces more rapid technology adoption, generates faster growth...