This Paper empirically investigates two important determinants of international activity through wholly owned operations, joint-ventures and licensing, namely country risk and IPRs protection. Using a comprehensive database on investments in chemical plants during the period 1981-96, we show...

This Paper empirically tests the ‘bounds approach’ to industry structure proposed by Sutton ((1991), (1998)). To carry out this task, we focus on the chemical industry. Part of the novelty in this exercise is that we work on the finest possible level of disaggregation. Also, we identify...

The neoclassical model of the production function, as applied by Robert Solow to build the neoclassical model of growth, linked labour and capital to output. More recently, Romer and others have expanded the model to include measures of knowledge capital. In this Paper we introduce a new factor,...

There has been considerable controversy over the apparent slowdown in productivity growth in Britain and in other industrial countries over 1971-80 and the apparent speed up in at least British productivity growth over 1980-83. This paper throws light on these matters by means of an aggregate...

Since the early 1980s, the role and general perception of entrepreneurship and start-up activities has changed drastically. In this paper, we investigate what determines regions’ entrepreneurial behaviour and the impact of it on regional economic performance. We argue that economic knowledge...

We argue that the 1970s were characterized by attempts to maintain a cooperative, low unemployment equilibrium in the face of considerable union power, through use of incomes policies and neo-corporatist machinery. The 1980s saw a shift away from this, towards direct measures to limit union...

Most treatments of the Great Depression have focused on its onset and its aftermath. In contrast, we take a unified view of the interwar period. We look at the slide into and the emergence from the 1920-21 recession and the roaring 1920s boom, as well as the slide into the Great Depression after...

This paper examines whether the different macroeconomic performances of the German economy in two post-war decades provide evidence for the theory (first advanced by Mancur Olson) that sharp institutional breaks are conducive to economic growth because they destroy the existing network of...

A theoretical model of collective wage bargaining is developed in which unions set wages and employers decide employment. A novel feature of the model is that the conventional expected utility calculus is replaced by one in which regret from failed wage bargains and jubilation from successful...

We estimate the impact of international trade on wages using data for French manufacturing firms. We instrument firm-level trade flows with firm-specific instrumental variables based on world demand and supply shocks. Both export and offshoring shocks have a positive effect on wages. Exports...