We use a large dataset covering all registered plants in the manufacturing sector in India over the period 1986 to 1995 to examine the effects of a 1992 income tax law change that eliminated the double taxation of wages paid to partners in partnership firms. This tax law change provides a unique...

We develop a model of international trade with two sources of firm heterogeneity: "productivity" and "caliber". Productivity is modeled as is standard in the literature. Caliber is the ability to produce quality using few fixed inputs. While there is no quality restriction to sell domestically,...

How do changes in competitive intensity affect trade patterns? In this paper, we exploit a quasi-natural experiment associated with increased anti-trust enforcement activity over the last two decades. A large number of international markets underwent a change in competitive intensity as they...

In this study, we present novel statistics on the patenting in US manufacturing and new evidence on the question of what happens when firms patent. We do so by creating a comprehensive firm-patent matched dataset that links the NBER patent data (covering the universe of patents) to firm data...

We propose an industry-level index of capital liquidity -- defined as the share of used capital in aggregate industry capital expenditure -- that relates (inversely) to sunkenness of capital investment. We then test the effect of capital liquidity on the dispersion and mean of industry...

We investigate the microeconomic effects of labor regulations that protect employment and are expected to increase rigidity in labor markets. We exploit a unique outlet-level dataset obtained from a multinational food chain operating 2,525 similar retail outlets in 43 countries outside the...

We exploit a unique outlet-level dataset from a multinational chain with over 2,500 outlets in 43 countries to investigate the effects of labor regulations that protect employment. The dataset contains information on output, materials, and labor costs at a weekly frequency over several years,...

We develop a model of international trade with export quality requirements and two dimensions of firm heterogeneity. In addition to "productivity", firms are also heterogeneous in their "caliber" — the ability to produce quality using fewer fixed inputs. Compared to single-attribute models of...

The extensive empirical macro- and micro-level evidence on the impact of job security provisions is largely inconclusive. We argue that the weak evidence is a consequence of the weak power of statistics used, which is suggested by a dynamic theory of plant-level labor demand that we develop....

We investigate the microeconomic effects of labor regulations that protect employment and are expected to increase rigidity in labor markets. We exploit a unique outlet-level dataset obtained from a multinational food chain operating about 2,840 retail outlets in 43 countries outside the United...