Why do cities differ so much in productivity? We document that most of the measured dispersion in productivity across US cities is spurious and reflects granularity bias: idiosyncratic heterogeneity in plant-level productivity and size, combined with finite plant counts. As a result, economies...

Despite the dominant role of hydropower in the global power generation mix and the popularity of studying the productivity impact of infrastructure investment, there is a lack of research regarding the impact of hydropower projects on firm productivity. Such a positive impact could promote a...

Does an improvement in growth prospects lead to a fall in the trade balance? The relevance of this question stems from the tendency for countercyclical fluctuations in the trade balance stressed by both the academic literature and policymakers. However, we do not find that improved growth...

Experiences during the Great Recession support the view that the UK labor market is relatively flexible. Unemployment rose less and recovered faster than in most other European economies. However, this success has been accompanied by a stagnation of productivity and wages; an open question is...

We review the literature on financial constraints and the performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We consider the important role that SMEs play in the economies of Australia and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. We examine the role of financial constraints in...

In this paper, I use Colombian data from 1996-2013 to construct two datasets that are used to assess whether the China Shock has affected the future growth rates of productivity, employment level, workforce composition, wages, export performance, and informal employment levels within Colombias...

The aim of the article is to present the main body of the KLEMS growth accounting recently implemented in Poland. The works on the KLEMS productivity accounting in Poland started in 2013 and focused on areas such as the development of methodology and the availability and assessment of data....

This article researches on the evolution of the business regulatory framework of Bolivia from 2006 to 2017 and its relationship with the country's Labor productivity, Total Factor Productivity, and its Informal Economy size. To do this, it analyzes the Doing Business annual reports and...

We study endogenous employment and distribution dynamics in a Post-Keynesian model of Kalecki-Steindl tradition. Productivity adjustments stabilise employment and the labour share in the long run: technological change allows firms to replenish the reserve army of workers in struggle over income...

Although market concentration is one of the main impediments to productivity growth globally, data constraints have limited its analysis to developed countries or cross-country studies based on definitions of market concentration across nations and industries. This paper takes advantage of a...

This paper explores the contribution of structural change and the skill upgrading of the labour force to productivity. Our growth decomposition based on an original database we built for Tunisia and Turkey shows that productivity is mainly explained by intra-industry changes during the import...

The study analyses the relationships between capital dynamics, productivity, global value chains and foreign direct investment using panel data techniques. Among other results, we confirm the high importance of tangible and intangible ICT capital for productivity and GVC integration. We examine...

Conflicts between management and workers are common and can have significant impacts on productivity. We study how workers in a large Bangladeshi sweater factory responded to management’s decision to lay off about a quarter of the workers following a period of labor unrest. Our main finding is...

The economic impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is studied using a (semi) endogenous growth model with two novel features. First, the task approach from labor economics is reformulated and integrated into a growth model. Second, the standard representative household assumption is rejected,...

Several studies have highlighted that African manufacturing wages are higher than comparator countries at similar levels of development, which contributes to the continent’s lower levels of manufacturing competitiveness. This paper derives unit labor costs - average wages relative to...

This paper studies the implications of perceived default risk for aggregate output and productivity. Using a model of credit contracts with moral hazard, we show that a firm's probability of default is a sufficient statistic for capital allocation. The theoretical framework suggests an aggregate...

Appointing or electing professionals to be public officials is a double-edged sword. Experts can use their rich knowledge to implement reforms, but they can also favor their own profession. In this study, we compare physician-trained state health ministers to ministers of other professions in...

This study examines whether the relationship between exports and productivity growth differs across firm size. Using panel data from three Sub-Saharan African countries, I use propensity score matching procedure to examine this relationship. This study finds evidence of productivity differences...

Appointing or electing professionals to be public officials is a double-edged sword. Experts can use their rich knowledge to implement reforms, but they can also favor their own profession. In this study, we compare physician-trained state health ministers to ministers of other professions in...

This study examines the spatial productivity and efficiency spillovers of Chinese provinces using a spatial Durbin production frontier model that accounts for persistent and transient efficiency using a panel dataset of Chinese provinces from 1985 to 2017. The role of spatial effects is often...

Cloud computing enables a shift in the costs of ICT adoption from investment in fixed capital to pay-on-demand services allowing firms to scale and reorganize. Using new firm-level data we examine the impact of cloud on firm growth, using zip-code-level instruments of the timing of high-speed...

The declining labor share in national income and rising inequality over the last four decades raise questions about causes of these trends. In order to explain these trends, we develop a theoretical model that links intra-industry distribution of wages to variation in market power of firms. The...

This paper investigates how rms' productivity is a ected by the relationship between organiza- tional practices and workers' level of education. Using rm-level panel data covering the period 2002 to 2008, I estimate complementarities among workers' level of education and a large set of...

Recently, there have been several retail companies experiencing bankruptcy. Many studies on bankruptcy risk are more seen from the financial performance perspective. Studies on the risk of financial performance are good but it seems too late to detect the risk. So far, no research investigates...

Digitalisation can be viewed as a major supply/technology shock affecting macroeconomic aggregates that are important for monetary policy, such as output, productivity, investment, employment and prices. This paper takes stock of developments in the digital economy and their possible impacts...

The paper studies the drivers of productivity at country and sectoral levels over the period 2000-2017 with the focus on the impact of capital accumulation and structure. The analysis confirms an especially important role of ICT and intangible digital capital for productivity growth,...

In many OECD countries, low productivity growth has coincided with rising inequality. Widening wage and productivity gaps between firms may have contributed to both developments. This paper uses a new harmonised cross-country linked employer-employee dataset for 14 OECD countries to analyse the...

We study the relationship between patents and actual product innovation in the market, and how this relationship varies with firms' market share. We use textual analysis to create a new data set that links patents to products of firms in the consumer goods sector. We find that patent filings are...

How do political connections affect firm dynamics, innovation, and creative destruction? To answer this question, we build a firm dynamics model, where we allow firms to invest in innovation and/or political connection to advance their productivity and to overcome certain market frictions. Our...