Globalization opens new opportunities also for small and medium sized enterprises (SME). However, empirical information on SMEs' international activities is still fragmented. The paper adds another piece of evidence in analyzing how Berlin SMEs are co-operating with partners in transition...

This paper uses a large plant level panel data set from Germany and a matching approach to look for causal effects of starting to export on plant performance. We find positive effects on growth of employment, labor productivity, and wages.

While Gibrat's Law assumes that growth rate variance is independent of size, empirical work has usually found a negative relationship between growth rate variance and firm growth. Using data on French manufacturing firms, we observe a relatively low, but statistically significant, negative...

In the middle of the nineties, the sharp increase in globalisation and the last privatization wave have promoted the shaping of a market for executives in France. Characteristics of this market are estimated for France and a competitive model is simulated in order to assess to what extend such a...

This paper uses a panel of about 6000 French establishments to test some implications of the modern theory of dynamic monopsony or upward sloping labour supply curves for average firm wages. Panel estimates provide strong evidence of a much larger long run employer size - wage effect (ESWE) than...

We study the effects of labor market rigidities and frictions on firm-size distributions and dynamics. We introduce a model of endogenous entrepreneurship, labor market frictions, and firm-size dynamics with many types of rigidities, such as hiring and firing costs, search frictions with vacancy...

In a framework for risk management a model of an international firm under exchange rate uncertainty is discussed. The firm can cross-hedge the exchange rate risk by using forwards of other country's currencies correlated to the spot exchange rate in question. The study investigates the...

Usually it is argued that an increase in exchange rate volatility reduces the volume of international trade since trading firms are risk averse. This paper shows for risk neutral firms that the expected international trade volume in standardized commodities grows with exchange rate volatility....

The optimum behavior of a competitive risk-averse international trader who supplies or demands commodities invoiced in foreign currency is examined when his profits are subject to several forms of risk: production, domestic cost, the exchange rate and the commodity price. The focus of our study...