Trading in futures markets has grown substantially for many commodities. At the same time the power of many dominant producers has weakened and core prices have tended to fall towards those on the fringe. Existing cartel/fringe models fail to explain the difference between core and fringe prices...

In this paper we study nationalizations in the oil industry around the world in 1960-2002. We show, both theoretically and empirically, that governments are more likely to nationalize when oil prices are high and when political institutions are weak. We consider a simple dynamic model of the...

Following a Supreme Court decision in 1954, natural gas markets in the U.S. were subject to 35 years of intensive federal regulation. Several studies have measured the deadweight loss from the price ceilings that were imposed during this period. This paper concentrates on an additional component...

Firms’ decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard...

This Paper examines the effects of two faces of R&D (innovation and development of absorptive or learning capacity) and technology spillovers from FDI (foreign direct investment) on a firm’s productivity growth. Using firm-level panel data on Czech manufacturing firms between 1995 and 1998, I...

In most transition countries the aggregate level evidence suggests that most industries are just destroying jobs, due to the legacy of communism where over-manning levels of employment were the norm. This Paper sheds light on whether the transition process in Slovenian manufacturing has been one...

Using standard as well as recently developed univariate and bivariate count data models, this paper analyses the determinants of workplace accidents using a firm data set for Germany. Given the tight system of public workplace safety regulation, introduced partly as early as in 1869 and the...

In this study we derive a structural econometric model of learning by doing with multiproduct competition from a dynamic oligopoly game. We show the importance to account for multiproduction effects through product differentiation when measuring learning by doing. Using quarterly firm-level data...

The goal of this essay is to bring the work of organizational ecologists on population dynamics to the attention of economists. Following a relatively brief exposition of the basic structure of the arguments made by organizational ecologists, we explore a number of areas where...

A short review of the theoretical and empirical evidence indicates that foreign direct investment (FDI) has the potential to increase the intensity of competition as well as to act as a channel for technology transfers. One would expect, all else equal, an increase in average firm performance...