The use of proxy variables to control for unobservables when estimating a production function has become increasingly popular in empirical works in recent years. The present paper aims to contribute to this literature in three important ways. First, we provide a structured review of the...

This paper analyzes the drivers of multinational affiliates’ R&D intensity, using a unique dataset based on the fourth Community Innovation Survey for Belgium. Specifically, we investigate the role of foreign affiliates’ local (host country) embeddedness and of host country spillovers on...

This paper aims to provide empirical researchers with an overview of the methodological issues that arise when estimating total factor productivity at the establishment level, as well as of the existing (parametric and semiparametric) techniques designed to overcome them. Apart from the...

This study assesses the contribution of the Dutch public export credit insurance facility (ECIF) to Dutch GDP and employment. Unlike previous studies, which generally adopt the gravity model of trade, we adopt an input-output approach. The results show that the contribution of economic activity...

We investigate the relationship between product diversification and performance in the Dutch property-liability (P&L) insurance industry for the period 2007-2018. We employ a two-step approach: we first investigate the drivers of diversification and, as a second step, we investigate the impact...

Large multi-product firms dominate international trade flows. This paper documents new facts about multi-product manufacturing exporters that are not easily reconciled with existing multi-product models. Using novel linked production and export data at the firm-product level, we find that the...

This paper provides concordance procedures for product-level trade and production data in the EU and examines the implications of changing product classifications on measured product adding and dropping at Belgian firms. Using the algorithms developed by Pierce and Schott (2012a, 2012b), the...

This paper determines the relative importance of technical efficiency and reallocation for aggregate productivity growth in a small open European economy. To this end we use a dataset containing all Belgian firms active in the private sector, both services and manufacturing. We observe at the...