Theoretical and empirical contributions on export behavior highlight the importance of firms' productivity and their levels of economies of scale on firms' export success in `foreign’ markets. In the context of agglomeration economies, firms enjoy productivity gains when they are located close...

Urbanization and localization effects are known to boost the regional economy and its growth potential. The emergence of these effects is due to localized knowledge flows, the closeness to markets, but also due to the diversity of services and industries. All these effects have the potential to...

There is evidence from the literature that firms enjoy higher productivity levels when the workforce employed is culturally more diverse. It is an open question whether this gain is utilized to shift the supply curve and set lower prices, in order to achieve a higher demand and possibly higher...

Using comprehensive data for German establishments (1999-2008), we estimate plant-level production functions to analyze if “cultural diversity” affects total factor productivity. We distinguish diversity in the establishment’s workforce and in the aggregate regional labor force where the...

International immigration affects the degree of cultural diversity present in a labour force. This paper focuses on the consequences of immigration with respect to the level of cultural diversity by estimating employment functions for individual establishments. The theory behind the empirical...

Innovation is a key driver of technological progress and growth in a knowledge-based economy. There are various motives for individual firms to innovate: improving quality secures market leadership, introducing new products leads the firm into new markets, adopting new technologies could be seen...

This chapter begins by documenting that temporary migrations are not only very common, but that outmigration of immigrants is selective both in terms of migrants’ individual characteristics and their economic outcomes. We then examine the problems that arise when estimating immigrants’...

Do information flows matter for remittance behavior? We design and implement a randomized control trial to quantitatively assess the role of communication between migrants and their contacts abroad on the extent and value of remittance flows. In the experiment, a random sample of 1,500 migrants...

An increasing amount of research in the migration literature shows a positive association between migrant diversity and rm productivity. However, the potential bias due to unobserved heterogeneity remains a challenge. In this paper we analyse the impact of cultural diversity on firm...