This paper presents an empirical analysis of the contribution of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) to labour productivity growth in the 1990s, using an extensive panel of firm-level data for Dutch market services. We estimate enhanced production function models that include ICT...

The paper empirically investigates whether a lack of competition determines the poor productivity performance of the European business services. It uses detailed panel data for 13 EU countries over the period 2000-2005. We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to estimate the productivity...

This paper has two aims. First, we uncover some salient components of fixed export costs, which play a crucial role in recent heterogeneous firms models of international trade. Second, we investigate whether the importance of these fixed export costs varies with the size of a firm’s...

This paper analyses the export market entry decisions of Dutch firms and their subsequent growth or market exit. When entering new markets, firms have to learn market conditions and have to search for new trade relations under uncertainty. We show that firms follow a stepping stone approach for...

We discuss and apply a new measure of competition: the elasticity of a firm's profits with respect to its cost level. A higher value of this profit elasticity (PE) signals more intense competition. Using firm level data we compare PE with the most popular competition measures such as the price...

European business services has witnessed about two decades of virtual productivity stagnation. The paper investigates whether this is caused by weak dynamic market selection. The time pattern of scale-related inefficiencies is used as an indicator for the effectiveness of market selection. We...