We examine how multinational firms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into different host countries. Both aggregate- and firm-level estimates suggest that more productive French firms are more likely than their less efficient competitors to invest in relatively tough...

This dissertation consists of three essays in process improvement and assortment planning. In the first essay, we study firm's strategies on balancing two conflicting manufacturing process improvement activities: learning and process change. Learning deepens the firm's knowledge of the...

The traditional education system in Qing China has been widely debated over the past decades. Some have argued it was efficient and furthered economic growth, while others have stressed its inefficient nature, which led to the introduction of the modern education system in the closing decades of...

In recent decades, national income has become increasingly important as a measure of a nation’s economic health. In this study, we used a wide array of primary and secondary sources to arrive at values of the Chinese per capita gross domestic product (GDP) during the period of 1661–1933. We...

ABSTRACTCHAPTER 1: A Structural Empirical Model of R&D Investment, Firm Heterogeneity, and Industry EvolutionThis paper develops and estimates a structural model of R&D investment and productivity evolution of manufacturing plants in the Korean electric motor industry from 1991 to 1996....

In this dissertation we study several key issues faced by firms while introducing new products to market. The first essay looks at product rollovers: introduction of a new product generation while phasing out the old one. We study the strategic decision of dual vs. single roll jointly with...

The majority of multinational firms today operate a multilateral production network. Most existing empirical analyses have, however, focused on firms' choice between producing at home and investing overseas and assumed that a firm's decision to invest in a foreign country is independent of its...

The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an increasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics literature has generally examined the formation of FTAs as a function of the participating countries' economic characteristics alone. In...

We use a Chinese firm-director level panel dataset to examine the matching of heterogeneous firms and politicians. Based on 36,308 detailed biographies, we identify individuals that previously held bureaucratic positions and classify the rank of each position in the Chinese political hierarchy....

Most multinational firms today operate multilateral production networks. Most existing empirical analyses, however, have focused on firms' choice between producing at home and investing overseas. This paper uses detailed French multinational subsidiary data to examine the effect of existing...