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Luca David Opromolla
- 18 February 2014
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1634Details
- Abstract
- Drawing from confidential firm-level balance sheets in 11 European countries, the paper presents a novel sectoral database of comparable productivity indicators built by members of the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) using a newly developed research infrastructure. Beyond aggregate information available from industry statistics of Eurostat or EU KLEMS, the paper provides information on the distribution of firms across several dimensions related to competitiveness, e.g. productivity and size. The database comprises so far 11 countries, with information for 58 sectors over the period 1995-2011. The paper documents the development of the new research infrastructure, describes the database, and shows some preliminary results. Among them, it shows that there is large heterogeneity in terms of firm productivity or size within narrowly defined industries in all countries. Productivity, and above all, size distribution are very skewed across countries, with a thick left-tail of low productive firms. Moreover, firms at both ends of the distribution show very different dynamics in terms of productivity and unit labour costs. Within-sector heterogeneity and productivity dispersion are positively correlated to aggregate productivity given the possibility of reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. To this extent, we show how allocative efficiency varies across countries, and more interestingly, over different periods of time. Finally, we apply the new database to illustrate the importance of productivity dispersion to explain aggregate trade results.
- JEL Code
- L11 : Industrial Organization→Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance→Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms
L25 : Industrial Organization→Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior→Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
D24 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity
O4 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
O57 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→Comparative Studies of Countries - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network
- 15 October 2013
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1596Details
- Abstract
- Knowledge is key to the success of a firm. Firms and their managers acquire knowledge via channels which are often difficult to track down and quantify. By matching employer-employee data with trade data at the firm level we show that the export experience acquired by managers in previous firms leads their current firm towards higher export performance, and commands a sizeable wage premium for the manager. Export knowledge is decisive when it is market-specific: managers with experience related to markets served by their current firm receive an even higher wage premium; firms are more likely to enter markets where their managers have experience; exporters are more likely to stay in those markets, and their sales are on average higher. Our findings are robust to controlling for endogeneity. The impact of managers' export experience on a firm's export performance is at least as strong as that of firm productivity.
- JEL Code
- M2 : Business Administration and Business Economics, Marketing, Accounting→Business Economics
L2 : Industrial Organization→Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior
F16 : International Economics→Trade→Trade and Labor Market Interactions
J31 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs→Wage Level and Structure, Wage Differentials
J62 : Labor and Demographic Economics→Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers→Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network