Learning-by-doing is a fundamental concept in economics but a challenging one to document in high-skilled settings due to non-random assignment of workers to tasks and lacking performance measures. Our paper overcomes these challenges in the context of heart attack treatments in Sweden, where we...

In the last two decades, new technologies and the rapid growth of the telecommunications sector have changed production and trade relations in world economic systems. Regional dependence on the level of productivity, supply and demand of telecommunications has increased worldwide. Our study...

In this paper, we assess the role of investment in research and development (R&D) and economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in Sri Lanka's economic growth experience. We do this by first determining which endogenous growth theories best explain the evolution of total factor productivity (TFP) in the...

This paper exploits time and geographic variation in the adoption of Special Economic Zones in India to assess the direct and spillover effects of the program. We combine geocoded firm-level data and geocoded SEZs using a concentric ring approach, thus creating a novel dataset of firms with...

This paper documents differences in firm size depending on whether their manager is a man or a woman and studies the aggregate implications of these gender gaps in Chile. We document that in 2007 less than a quarter of firms are managed by women and that this gap takes its largest value for...

The marketization of agricultural land affects the average land productivity not only through improving land allocation efficiency but also through reducing land price under the perfect market. The effect of the improvement of land allocation efficiency on the average land productivity is...

Firms with superior productivity, labeled superstar firms, are argued to be the link between rising concentration and the fall of the aggregate labor share in the US. This analysis confirms that similar evidence is found within the European context: the market share and firm size increase,...

Economic analysts have used trends in total factor productivity (TFP) to evaluate the effectiveness with which economies are utilizing advances in technology. However, this measure is problematic on several different dimensions. First, the idea that it is possible to separate out the relative...

Higher fertility slowly increases the workers-to-retirees ratio over the long run, which can ease the pension financing challenge brought about by population aging. It may or may not increase production per capita. Existing simulation studies all find a positive impact on public finances over...

In the literature on the firm-industry debate to explain organizational performance the firm effect has been more supported than the industry effect by empirical studies, mainly focused on manufacturing firms and long time periods. Unfortunately, little attention has been paid to the service...

We study the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on productivity by matching firm performance outcomes with corresponding firm-level information on government support. Our cross-country evidence for five EU countries shows that the pandemic led to a significant short-term decline in...

We provide first evidence of the impact of over-education, among natives and immigrants, on firm-level productivity and wages. We use Belgian linked panel data and rely on the methodology from Hellerstein et al. (1999) to estimate ORU (over-, required, and under-education) equations aggregated...

This paper surveys the emerging economics literature on the relationship between employee training and firm performance. Most studies find very high returns to training, at least from the perspective of firms, indicating that the costs of training can be recouped in short periods of time. These...

In a cross-sectional study among 623 employees of a higher education institution, we examined the relations between perceived competence, autonomy, relatedness, intrinsic motivation, and productivity during the first lockdown in the spring of 2020. The results indicate that, relative to the...

Population Economics (PopEc) covers a number of topics in Economics, as well as in Demography, Labor Studies, Sociology, etc. For example, the economic determinants of population change and demographic behavior covers topics such as household formation, marriage and divorce, fertility, gender,...

This study explores how aridity (proxied with a measure of soil potential evapotranspiration) impacts agricultural productivity and child wellbeing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate conditions, crop yield, and infant health measures are collected over approximately 4,000 grid cells of 0.5 x 0.5 in...

Following the shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy may be significantly changed relative to the pre-pandemic world. One critical shift induced by the COVID- 19 pandemic is a need for physical distance (at least 6 feet apart) between workers and customers. In this study, we examine the...

Adoption of new practices and technologies influences farm productivity and agricultural growth. Countries invest in research and extension to ensure continuous growth both at the farm and industry level. This chapter investigates agricultural technology production, its knowledge transfer, and...

Compared to other regions of the world, the potential for information technology penetration in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is very high. Unfortunately, productivity levels in the region are also very low. This study investigates the importance of information technology in influencing the effect of...

In recent decades, Africa has received a large share of official development assistance compared to other regions of the world. Using AidData for 2000-13, this paper examines the effects of aid to productive sectors on manufacturing growth in Africa. Econometric results show that increased...

Since the onset of globalisation, production activities have become increasingly fragmented and organised in global value chains (GVC). These networks facilitate trade in intermediaries across industrial sectors and countries and change the conditions for policies to respond to shocks. In this...