This paper studies the role of efficiency in a firm’s decision to contract out. Emphasis is on the heterogeneous nature of firms and when firms are only considering outsourcing to domestic suppliers. Firm-level data on Australian manufacturing reveal an ordering of efficiency between firms...

This paper considers aspects of the competitive selection process in China – firm entry, survival, and exit – in an important sector of manufacturing, looking in particular for changes resulting from the process of reform. Using industry census data from a province in North-East China, we...

While India's remarkable performance in IT software and service exports may be inspirational for other Indian industries and more so for other countries in the south, the moot question is how has India fared in terms of harnessing this technology for enhancing manufacturing productivity. This...

In this paper, we estimate mark-ups with plant level production data for Argentina from a structural model of cost-minimizing producers, as proposed by De Loecker and Warzynski (2012). We explore systematic differences across industries and plants. Our main findings are that mark-ups are higher...

What type of businesses do unions target for organizing and when? A dynamic model of the union organizing process is constructed to answer this question. A union monitors establishments in an industry to learn about their productivity, and decides which ones to organize and when. An...

Was the average late nineteenth century Canadian manufacturer a hopelessly inefficient laggard when compared to his American counterparts just on the other side of the international border? Could it have been that Canadian producers were really productivity leaders so early in their...

In this case study performed on the industrial sub-sector of manufacture of leather shoes in Bolivia, we use the Hsieh and Klenow model (2008) to determine the differences between productivity of larger and formal companies and productivity of smaller and informal companies. Our results reveal...

This paper analyzes the effects of foreign direct investment on the sales growth rate of domestic companies in the Czech Republic. Using firm- level panel data from 1995 to 2003, it studies both horizontal and vertical spillovers. The study allows for the lagged nature of spillovers and pays at-...

In markets where spatial competition is important, theory predicts increases in producer density (the number of producers per unit area in the local market) should lead to lower average prices. When producers are heterogeneous, this link exists for two reasons. First, the greater product...

We investigate the impact of occupational safety and health (OSH) and environmental regulation on the rate of growth of total factor productivity (TFP) in the Quebec manufacturing sector during the 1985-88 period. Our results show that environmental regulation and OSH protective reassignments (a...