This paper develops a general equilibrium model of multi-product firms and analyzes their behavior during trade liberalization. Firm productivity in a given product is modeled as a combination of firm-level “ability” and firmproduct-level “expertise”, both of which are stochastic and unknown prior to the firm’s payment of a sunk cost of entry. Higher firm-level ability raises a firm’s productiv...

Economists have observed a shift in productivity growth from IT-producing to IT-using industries after the dot-com bust, but the causes of this shift remain unexplained. This paper uses fine-grained data on IT labor movements from online resume databases to track the flow of skills out of IT producing firms after the dot-com bust, and to test the hypothesis that a reallocation of these technica...

In the last decade, a rising number of firms have adopted voluntary international environmental management and product standards, such as the international ISO 14001 management standard or organic certification. Although emerging research analyzes the impact of these standards on environmental and financial performance, there is to our knowledge no empirical research on how they affect the prod...

in recent decades, foreign direct investment (fdi) has played a vital role in economic growth of developed and developing countries. fdi brings new capital and technology to the host country beside a possibility of spillover to local firms. hence, fdi is considered as an important channel of technology transfer. however, in empirical studies, the size and direction of effects of fdi on producti...

While private equity (PE) is expanding rapidly in developing countries, there is little academic research on this subject. In this paper I exploit two new data sources and employ two distinct empirical strategies to identify the impact of PE on Indian firms. I compare the investments made by one of India’s largest PE firms to the investments that just missed (deals that made it to the final rou...

Financial frictions can reduce aggregate productivity, in particular when firms with high productivity cannot borrow against their profits. This paper investigates the quantitative importance of this form of borrowing constraint using a large panel of firms in Japan. The firms are young and unlisted, precisely the firms for which credit frictions are expected to be the most severe. In this data...

This paper provides new evidence on the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the productivity of domestic firms. Using a specially designed survey on a sample of over 7,500 manufacturing firms in Vietnam we uncover some of the mechanisms that explain productivity spillovers from FDI through vertical linkages along the supply chain. Our results suggest that domestic firms exp...

Firms make investments in technology to increase productivity. But in emerging markets, where a culture of informality is widespread, information technology (IT) investments leading to greater transparency can impose a cost through higher taxes and need for regulatory compliance. This tendency of firms to avoid productivity-enhancing technologies and remain small to avoid transparency has been ...

We analyze the effects of European Antidumping (AD) protection on Total Factor Productivity (TFP) growth of import-competing domestic firms. We identified a panel of 1,793 European firms between 1993 and 2000 affected by AD cases that were initiated in 1996. Using a difference-indifference approach, we find evidence of increased TFP growth for those firms that filed for protection compared to f...