We separately observe variable input expenditure and expenditure on fixed inputs in novel firm-level data covering the Belgian manufacturing sector over the last decades. This permits a deeper investigation of two potential drivers of the globally observed widening gap between firms' revenue and...

In most transition countries the aggregate level evidence suggests that most industries are just destroying jobs, due to the legacy of communism where ovfirmanning levels of employment were the nfirm. This paper sheds light on whether the transition process in Slovenian manufacturing has been...

I use matched sampling techniques to analyze whether firms that start exporting become more productive. To this end, I use micro data of Slovenian manufacturing firms operating between the period 1994-2000. I estimate total factor productivity using the Olley-Pakes correction for sample...

The process of the East-West integration has come to a point that enlargement appears inevitable. But are these countries really ready to join the EU in tfirms of competitive perfirmance? Firstly, we construct a virtual best practice production frontier for firms active in a European Union...

In most transition countries the aggregate level evidence suggests that most industries are just destroying jobs, due to the legacy of communism where over-manning levels of employment were the norm. This paper sheds light on whether the transition process in Slovenian manufacturing has been one...

We analyze the aggregate markup of a small-open economy, Belgium, using a firm-level dataset that includes all non-financial, private firms. The dataset covers the period 1980-2016 and merges the annual firm accounts over three periods when firms faced different reporting thresholds for the key...

We evaluate the impact of international competition on firm-level perfor- mance in Belgium. In the manufacturing sector we consider both the impact of global competition through measures of import penetration and the impact of within-EU competitiveness using measures of relative labor cost. In...

We build an equilibrium model of a small open economy with labor market frictions and imperfectly enforced regulations. Heterogeneous firms sort into the formal or informal sector. We estimate the model using data from Brazil, and use counterfactual simulations to understand how trade affects...

Conventional wisdom suggests that producer prices are more rigid than consumer prices and therefore play less of a role in the allocation of goods and services. Analyzing 1987-2008 microdata collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for the producer price index, we find that producer...

We develop a framework for quantifying barriers to labor force participation (LFP) and entrepreneurship faced by women in India. We find substantial barriers to LFP, and higher costs of expanding businesses through the hiring of workers for women entrepreneurs. However, there is one area in...