This paper investigates the relationship between the diffusion of EU standards and product quality upgrading using highly disaggregated import data to the EU in the food industry. Results show that, on average, the diffusion of EU voluntary standards boosts the rate of quality upgrading. However...

Melitz and Ottaviano’s (2008) firm-heterogeneity model predicts that trade liberalization induces a selection process from low to high productivity firms, which translates to an industry productivity growth. A similar firms’ selection effect is induced by market size. In this paper, these...

We analyse common stylized facts of services firms engaged in trade in a comparative study across four EU member countries. We find that, though relatively less engaged in trade than manufacturing firms, services firms have similar traits. Services firms are more likely to import than to export....

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of ten transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the...

This paper adds a new dimension to the recent literature on relationship beween firm's heterogeneity in terms of productivity and its decision to exports and/or invest in foreign affiliate, namely the heterogeneity of foreign markets. Exploiting a rich and complete dataset for Slovenian...

The paper analyses whether, and to what extent, firm's ability to innovate is induced by firm's own R&D activity and to what extent by factors external to firm. It first estimates the impact of firms' internal R&D capital and external R&D spillovers on firms' innovation activity within an...

Firm productivity and export decision are closely related to its innovation ac- tivity. Product innovation may play a more important role in the decision to start exporting, while the decision for process innovation may be triggered by success- ful exporting. This suggests that the causality...

The paper examines implications of endogenous growth theory on the relationship between firm productivity, innovation as well as productivity growth by combining information on firm-level innovation (CIS) with accounting data for a large sample of Slovenian firms in the period 1996-2002. We...

This paper adds a new dimension to the recent literature on relationship beween firm's heterogeneity in terms of total factor productivity and its dynamic exports vs. FDI decision, namely the heterogeneity of export markets. We show that higher productivity of investing firms relative to just...