Using a novel modeling approach, and cross-country firm level data for the textiles industry, we examine the impact of institutional quality on firm performance. Our methodology allows us to estimate the marginal impact of institutional quality on productivity of each firm. Our results bring...

The stylized literature on foreign direct investment suggests that developing countries should invest in the human capital of their labour force in order to attract foreign direct investment. However, if educational quality in developing country is uncertain such that formal education is a noisy...

We use the stochastic frontier approach to estimate the impact of firm characteristics on investment decisions of Indian firms during the 1997-2006 period. The use of the stochastic frontier approach allows us to define the (unobserved) optimum investment that is consistent with a firm's...

We introduce a novel approach to modeling the impact of institutional quality on firm performance. Our methodology enables us to estimate the marginal effect of institutional quality on TFP, factor inputs and output of each firm, which gives us within-country distributions of these effects and...

Our analysis of a rich representative household survey for Malawi, where patrilineal and matrilineal institutions coexist, suggests that (a) in matrilineal societies the likelihood of cash crop cultivation by a household increases with the extent of land owned (or de facto controlled) by males,...

Using firm-level data from Bulgaria and Romania, this paper addresses a lacuna in the transition literature, namely, the link of firm-level employment turnover with firm-level growth in labour productivity. The results suggest that while net job creation at the firm level was affected by...

In this paper we examine the issue of high dropout rates in India which has adverse implications for human capital formation, and hence for the country’s long term growth potential. Using the 2004-05 National Sample Survey employment-unemployment survey data, we estimate transition...

This paper proposes a flexible stochastic cost frontier panel data model where the technology parameters are unknown smooth functions of firm- and time-effects, which non-neutrally shift the cost frontier. The model decomposes inefficiency into firm and time-specific components and productivity...

This paper presents new nonparametric measures of scale economies and TFP growth for U.S. banks. Unlike previous studies that use fully nonparametric models, our approach controls for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity among banks in estimating returns to scale, TFP growth and its...

This paper analyzes the impact of load factor, facility and generator types on the productivity of Korean electric power plants. In order to capture important differences in the effect of load policy on power output, we use a semiparametric smooth coefficient (SPSC) model that allows us to model...