This document focuses on innovation, human capital, technology transfers and competition as potential sources of productivity growth for firms. It integrates the views of existing literature such as the two faces of R&D, the convergence debate and the existence of firm-level heterogeneity in...

Using data from 11 EU countries, the paper investigates the impact of scale economies on labour productivity in European business services. Moreover, it analyses whether the incidence of scale sub-optimality is related to characteristics of the market or to national regulation characteristics....

The paper investigates whether scale effects, market structure, and regulation determine the poor productivity performance of the European business services industry. We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to estimate the productivity frontier and subsequently explain the distance of...

This article analyses the role of economic diplomacy on the export market entry decisions of Dutch firms. We show that the presence of government support offices in middle-income countries and government trade missions stimulate Dutch firms to enter export markets in these countries. These...

This book analyzes growth at the total economy and industry level from an international perspective, providing unique cross-country comparisons. The authors focus on the EU-25 countries but also include the US, Japan and Korea. The chapters explore growth patterns from a long-run perspective,...

We embed the innovation production function in a model that analyzes the impact of innovation output on manufacturing multi-factor productivity (MFP) growth. We combine a market share model with a gross output production function. This revenue approach enables a 'demand-shift' interpretation of...