Do Domestic Firms Benefit from Foreign Presence and Import Competition in Irish Services Sectors?

This paper examines whether domestic firms benefit from the pro‐competitive effects of imports from abroad and from the presence of foreign‐owned firms in the host country in three Irish market‐services sectors between 2001 and 2007. Grouping the three sectors together masks opposing effects in individual sectors. Where significant, the effect of foreign presence on domestic firms tends to be negative, this is mainly the case in wholesale and retail trade. Despite it being of lesser importance than foreign presence in these sectors, import competition from abroad is negatively associated with domestic firms' productivity in wholesale and retail trade, but positively in transport, storage and communication. There is no significant effect of foreign presence or import competition in real estate, rental and business activities. Using capital‐labour ratios as an input‐based indicator related to productivity suggests that domestic firms adapt to increased foreign competition by adjusting their inputs.     

Trade and technology adoption

This paper endogenizes firms' choices of production technology in what would be a standard Melitz model otherwise. The responses of firms' productivity to trade liberalization are heterogenous: exporters, on average, improve their level of technology adoption, whereas nonexporters downgrade their level of technology adoption. The degree to which firms adjust production technology depends on domestic market size, export destination market size, trade impediments, and export status. The conflicting empirical results of the impact of trade liberalization on exporters' productivity are rationalized by showing that changes in different trade costs (variable vs. fixed costs) affect firms' productivity differently. We calibrate the model's parameters to match firms' characteristics in the global economy. The results indicate that endogenous productivity increases the gains from trade liberalization.     

进口中间品质量对企业生产率的影响——基于影响渠道的分析

通过使用2000~2013年中国工业企业数据库和海关数据库测算出企业进口产品的质量,分析进口产品质量对企业生产率的影响以及影响渠道,结果显示:企业进口高质量的资本品、中间品以及消费品能够提升企业生产率;企业进口高质量产品能够通过加剧行业竞争,促进企业提升生产率,提高竞争力;企业进口高质量产品的技术创新效应不同,资本品和消费品的技术创新效应为正,中间品为负;中间品技术创新效应为负的原因是加工贸易中的来料加工占据中国中间品进口的大部分且其技术创新效应为负。     

Foreign sourcing and exporting

The aim of this paper was analysing the role of sourcing intermediate inputs internationally on export decisions and distinguishing whether intermediates are sourced from firms belonging to the same business group or from independent suppliers. To analyse firms' export decisions, we use a specification that also accounts for sunk costs and accumulated experience in export markets (i.e., export market learning). We consider that importing intermediates might have direct and indirect effects (operating through enhanced productivity) on the export participation decision. The direct effects on exporting are isolated once we control for productivity and the effects of belonging to an international group. We use a manufacturing panel data set drawn from the Spanish Survey on Business Strategies (ESEE) for the period 2006–14. Both productivity and inward or outward FDI increase the probability of exporting. Moreover, our results uncover the existence of sunk costs and export market learning, and also the relevant role played by intermediate imports in firms' export choices. Their effects act both through the (indirect) channel of enhancing firms' productivity and through a direct effect related to product upgrading, more competitive selling prices or learning from the firm's import experience.     

Internationalisation and Economic Performance of Enterprises: Evidence from Polish Firm‐level Data

This article provides evidence on the relative performance of internationalised firms using Polish firm‐level data, spanning the period 1996–2005 and covering all medium and large enterprises. We distinguish between three modes of internationalisation: foreign direct investment, exporting and importing of capital goods. Our results point strongly at the superior performance of foreign affiliates vs domestic firms, exporters vs non‐exporters, and importers vs non‐importers: internationalised firms are larger, more capital intensive, pay higher wages and are more productive than purely domestic firms. Foreign ownership is the strongest factor accounting for gains from internationalisation. The premia from exporting are substantially lower, though also significantly positive. The performance of capital goods importers is also higher compared to non‐importers and is to some extent related to their involvement in other types of international activity. The results are robust to the choice of specification and productivity estimator. The analysed enterprises recorded a sizeable and broad‐based productivity improvement over the period under consideration. Not only the initial levels of productivity of exporters, importers and foreign affiliates were on average significantly higher that those of their non‐internationalised counterparts, but they also recorded faster productivity gains (manifested in increasing productivity premia), so that the discrepancies grew even larger. We also perform the analysis of productivity spillovers from internationalised firms onto own, downstream and upstream sectors. We find evidence of significant horizontal and backward spillovers from all three types of international activity. Our results suggest that trade externalities are rather of a horizontal nature, while those related to foreign direct investment operate mainly via backward linkages.     

Firms' imports and quality upgrading: Evidence from Chinese firms

Using transaction-level data for the Chinese manufacturing sector, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the causal effect that firms' imports have on quality upgrading. We implement an empirical strategy that delivers quality estimates at the firm-product-destination level. Exploiting this measure and accounting for the endogeneity of imported inputs, this paper shows that sourcing from abroad boosts export quality. Moreover, the analysis indicates that quality improvements are particularly strong when firms purchase inputs from high-income countries. Taken together, these results provide direct evidence that quality upgrading is an important mechanism through which imports favour firms' export performance.     

Competitive pressure,innovation and trade protection: Evidence from US patent data

Recent theoretical models have suggested that the relationship between competition and innovation may best be characterised as an inverted‐U shape: firms in industries with low levels of competition are more likely to innovate in the wake of increased competition as they attempt to escape competition, while those in highly competitive industries will decrease innovation in the wake of increased competition as the profit incentive to innovate dissipates. Results from other studies have found positive as well as negative relationships between innovation and competition. In a parallel literature, trade economists have produced conflicting results regarding the impact of trade liberalisation on innovation. One stream of research has shown that increased access to imported intermediate goods increases productivity, suggesting a positive relationship between imports and innovation. Others have hypothesised that firms may use the technology embodied in intermediate inputs as a substitute for domestic innovation. In this paper, we merge these divergent literatures and investigate whether innovation, as measured by the production of patents by US manufacturers, has been impacted by market competition and tariff reductions. Our empirical findings indicate that insulation from imports in the form of higher tariffs on final goods was associated with innovation until the late 1980s, while falling tariffs on intermediate goods appear to have facilitated innovation during the 1990s. We also find evidence of the inverted U‐shaped relationship between market competition and innovation.     

Human capital and FDI: Development process of the developing country in an overlapping generation model

We construct an overlapping generation model with human capital accumulation to analyze the effect of human capital level on foreign direct investment (FDI) in a small open developing country. In particular, we assume that manufactured goods have the human capital intensive technology and young agents choose whether to work or to educate themselves. When the human capital level in the developing country is sufficiently small, manufactured goods firms do not conduct FDI and the economy in the developing country is trapped in poverty. If the government of the developing country levies a tariff on the imports of manufactured goods, manufacturers conduct FDI, and the economy in the developing country can escape from the poverty trap.     

Impact of institutional quality on the capital structure of firms in developing countries

This paper investigates the effects of institutional quality on firms' capital structure for a panel of 3891 firms from 23 developing countries. Our main findings for the full panel show institutional quality has a significantly positive effect on firms' capital structure. At the regional level, based on the panel data for 2187 firms from Asian countries and 1091 firms from Latin American and Eastern European countries, institutional quality has a significantly positive effect on capital structure. However, for the 613 firms from African countries, institutional quality is mostly insignificant. Additional analysis reveals positive effects of legal enforcement on capital structure.     

Import Competition and Labor Productivity

The impact of import competition on labor productivity is examined using panel data for a sample of Australian manufacturing firms over the period 1984–1993. Import competition is found to interact with domestic competition; such the positive impact of import competition on the level and rate of growth of labor productivity rises with the degree of concentration among domestic producers. The results suggest that lowering border protection on manufactured imports into Australia has led to enhanced productivity from domestic producers, especially from those producers in highly concentrated industries.     

Earnings management and firms' investment behavior: The threshold effect of ROE

This paper, on the basis of a sample of Chinese listed firms, investigates the relationship between both real and accrual-based earnings management activities and firms' capital investment behavior. We apply the threshold model proposed by Hansen (1999) and find firms managing earnings can either over or underinvest, depending upon firms' return on equity (ROE) level. The study results show an inverted relationship between earnings management and firms' investment, which changes from negative to positive with ROE rising beyond certain threshold levels. We also find that the level of ROE affects whether managers use real and accrual manipulations jointly or as substitutes in affecting firms' investment. Our evidence is important because it sheds new light on the relationship between earnings management activities and firms' investment behavior by showing that ROE may act as an important determinant in this relationship. This finding has important implications for policymakers such as the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) as it shows that the regulatory benchmarks they set may have a significant impact on firms' investment behavior.     

The Impact of Public Support on SMEs' Outward FDI: Evidence from Italy

This paper evaluates the impact of public financial support to the internationalization of small and medium enterprises. We analyze the growth performance of firms that conducted outward foreign direct investments in the period 1994–2008, comparing firms that benefited from public support (380) with a sample of firms that also internationalized their activity in the same period but without any incentive (508). The econometric results, stemming from a two‐step treatment effect model, reveal that incentives are effective in enhancing firms' performance in terms of domestic turnover and productivity growth, especially when they are targeted at smaller and younger firms. Moreover, the effect of the incentives is enhanced for firms that have accumulated international experience.     

Capital structure and speed of adjustment in non-financial firms: Does sharia compliance matter? Evidence from Saudi Arabia

This study investigates the effect of sharia compliance status on firms' capital structure decisions and speed of adjustment in non-financial firms in the Saudi Arabian market from 2005 to 2016. It finds that sharia compliance plays a significant role in determining capital structure decisions. Specifically, sharia-compliant firms have significantly lower levels of leverage and slower speeds of adjustment as measured by both book and market proxies of capital structure than non-sharia-compliant firms, owing to the multiple restrictions to which they are subject, which limits their financing channels. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to compare the effect of sharia compliance on firms' capital structure speed of adjustment towards the trade-off theory target leverage ratio.     

Do customers respond to the disclosure of internal control weakness?

In this study, we investigate the effects of firms' internal control weakness (ICW) disclosures on their customers. We hypothesize that ICW disclosure adversely affects customers' perceptions of firms' ability and incentive to honor implicit commitments to customers, and as such, customers are less willing to buy from such firms. We thus expect a decline in firms' sales growth after ICW disclosure. We find a significant decline in sales growth subsequent to Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX) Section 404 ICW disclosure after controlling for firms' past sales growth and other factors affecting sales performance and internal control. This result is robust to the consideration of selection bias in ICW disclosure. We also find that the decline is more pronounced for firms with company-level ICW disclosure, with industrial customers, in the durable goods industries, with high research and development (R&D) intensity, or without subsequent remediation of ICW. Taken together, these results are consistent with the argument that ICW concerns customers more when the implicit contracts between the firms and their customers are more intensive.     

Offshore production and skill upgrading by Japanese manufacturing firms

We investigate the influence of offshore production by Japanese multinationals on domestic skill intensity. Identifying relationships based on within variation in a panel of 1070 firms, we find that additional foreign affiliate employment in low-income countries raises skill intensity. The positive effect of FDI on domestic skill intensity, however, diminishes as investment shifts towards high-income countries. Increases in affiliate employment in low-income countries also raise a firm’s reliance on finished goods purchases, suggesting that overseas employment affects domestic skill intensity because imports of final goods from foreign affiliates displace domestic production.     

How innovation impacts firms' export survival: Does export mode matter?

The innovation-export nexus has been extensively explored, while relatively few studies have focused on innovation's impact on firms' export survival and the role of export mode. Using a large panel dataset from China, this research empirically explores how innovation impacts firms' export survival, considering export modes. First, we employ the discrete-time survival analysis model (cloglog) to examine this research addressing the censored issue. Second, the propensity score matching (PSM) methodology is employed to address the selection-bias issue and select the similar firms based on which to compare their Kaplan–Meier survivor probability. Results present a positive role of innovation in the export survival of direct exporters; however, there is an inverted-U relationship between innovation intensity and their survival probability. For indirect exporters, evidence shows an insignificant innovation-export survival nexus. In addition, results show higher export survival for Chinese innovative exporters who are foreign-owned, highly export-intensive, long-lasting in export market, in technology industries. For innovative exporters who export directly, those in medium and low-technological industries and export capital goods are more likely to survive. Our research provides insights for Chinese exporters regarding innovation participation and suggests the government conducting prudent and deliberate design for innovation strategy.     

Corporate fraud under pyramidal ownership structure: Evidence from a regulatory reform

This paper explores a causal relationship between firms' ownership structures and the likelihood of corporate fraud. We document that central firms that control the business group tend to commit corporate frauds related to unlawful intragroup trades (collusive activities and unfair transactions). Following South Korea's 2001 regulatory reform that imposes a ceiling on firms' total amount of shareholding of domestic companies, the frequency of corporate frauds was reduced more in central firms than in non-central firms as the controlling owner's cash-flow rights dropped more in central firms. These results suggest that controlling owners commit frauds to pursue their private benefit.     

Markups,import competition and exporting

This paper analyses the relationship between markups and international trade at the firm level using a large sample of French manufacturing firms for the period 1995–2007. In particular, the paper investigates the effect of increasing import competition from China on firms' price–cost margins and the way in which exporting interacts with this effect. The results show robust evidence that firms in more direct competition with Chinese imports decrease their markups. However, firms that become exporters experience a smaller reduction in their price–cost margins. Consistent with these findings, the results also show that firms facing tougher competition from China are more likely to start exporting to avoid such competitive pressures.     

Detecting learning‐by‐exporting effects on firms' productivity distribution by accounting for heterogeneous macrofactors and panel attrition

This paper aims to verify the presence of the learning‐by‐exporting effect on total factor productivity growth. The study starts, as is typical in this context, by addressing the pre‐entry selection bias at firm level but differs from the literature by focusing on the distribution of the outcome and considering the presence of the different influences of macroeconomic factors on exporters and non‐exporters. Additionally, the paper addresses the panel attrition, a current source of estimation bias in longitudinal studies. The analysis is based on a panel of Italian manufacturing firms in the 1998–2007 period. We design an experiment by aligning and pooling cohorts of firms that allow us to obtain a sufficiently large group of firms entering the international market. Our results show that internationalisation affects firms' productivity and that the effect is heterogeneous over total factor productivity distribution and larger for the firms at the bottom section of the distribution itself. Furthermore, we observe that the learning‐by‐exporting effect may be confounded without (a) considering that domestic and exporter firms may afford heterogeneous demand cycles and (b) managing the dropout of some firms from the panel.     

Innovation investment,competitiveness, and performance in industrial firms

Intangible assets and research and development (R&D) expenditure are essential instruments in a firm's competitive productivity and profitability strategy. The relationship between productivity, tangible and intangible investments, and R&D expenditure has given rise to much analysis concerning the importance of the role played by intangible investment in the achievement of higher competitiveness. Using the Spanish database of the Fundación Empresa Pública‐Ministerio Industria (FUNEP) for the period 1991–2001, with an average of 1,800 firms per year taken from 20 industries and classified in six sectoral groups, we compare the possible relationship of the former variables with firms' profitability and productivity. The empirical results obtained show the importance of tangible investments and unit labor costs for achieving high productivity levels. R&D expenditure and intangible capital are shown to be complementary variables of the aforementioned aspects that have a delayed effect on the productivity and profitability of Spanish industries. The relevance of the prior variables differs according to whether we are referring to industrial sectors characterized by important economies of scale, intensive in capital or labor. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.