This study analyzes empirically the effects of import competition on firm productivity (TFPQ) using administrative firm-level panel data from German manufacturing. We find that only import competition from high-income countries is associated with positive incentives for firms to invest in...

The question whether agglomeration effects are of importance for regional development has a long tradition in regional science. This paper asks if regional characteristics and specifically ag-glomeration effects influence the performance of plants in Germany and, if so, in which direction....

Empirical research on agglomeration and regional economic growth puts high emphasis on the impact of specialization, diversity, and competition on regional employment dynamics (Glaeser et al. 1992, Henderson et al. 1995, Blien et al. 2006, Fuchs 2009). However, Beugelsdijk (2006) and Raspe/van...

We present some preliminary empirical results on impact of international certification on export behavior of Russian manufacturing firms. Our research is motivated, first, by the fact that little is known about the impact of ISO certification on the performance of Russian firms and, second, by...

The paper proposes a model to investigate the influences of agglomeration on heterogeneous firms' exporting behaviors. In the model, firms are heterogeneous in productivity. Selection effect and agglomeration economies caused by agglomeration increase firms' productivity and decreases industrial...

In this paper we propose a new small area estimation methodology aimed at the estimation of Value Added, Labor Cost and related competitiveness indicators for subsets of the population of Italian small and medium sized manufacturing firms classified according to geographical region, industrial...