Recruitment channel use and applicant arrival: An empirical analysis

This paper focuses on the recruitment behaviour of firms at the extensive margin; we empirically explore the relationship between employer search strategies and the number of applicants by means of (reduced form) two-equations simultaneous models. The empirical analysis is carried out on a rich micro data set on Dutch employer recruitment behaviour. Our empirical analysis reveals that the economic conditions prevailing on the labour market influence employer search activity at the extensive margin. In particular, we see that in tight (slack) labour markets characterised by excess demand (supply) of labour, the flow of applicants is smaller (larger). Employers react to the shortage (excess) of applicants by using more (less) often advertisements. This recruitment channel appears to trigger a significantly larger flow of applicants. First version received: December 1997/Final version received: June 2000     

Real estate price and heterogeneous investment behavior in China

We study the dynamic link between real estate prices and firms' investment behaviors in China using a new Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model. The model features heterogeneous production sectors in which private firms face discriminatory borrowing constraints while state-owned firms are not. Fitted to China's quarterly data from 2005Q3 to 2014Q4, the quantitative general equilibrium model enables us to identify the driving forces behind and the macroeconomic variables interacting with land price. It confirms the existence of the “collateral channel” in the private sector without bearing the potential endogeneity problems in empirical studies. More importantly, we identify a “crowding out” channel between private and state-owned firms caused by discriminatory financial constraints. The “crowding out” channel implies a negative relationship between real estate prices and the investment of state-owned firms, which has been documented in empirical research but short of explanation so far.     

Optimal policy and the role of social contacts in a search model with heterogeneous workers

This paper develops a search model with heterogeneous workers and social networks. High‐ability workers are more productive and have a larger number of professional contacts. Firms can choose between a vacancy in the regular market and a job opening in the referral market. The model predicts that a larger number of social contacts is associated with a larger wage gap between high‐ and low‐ability workers and a larger difference in the unemployment rates. The net welfare gain of referrals is estimated at 1.2%. There are three reasons for the inefficiency of the decentralized equilibrium. First is the traditional search externality described by Hosios. Second, firms share their profits with workers, whereas the social optimum implies that full surplus should be given to firms in the referral market. This inefficiency can be internalized by means of referral subsidies. Third, there is the “pooling inefficiency” in the regular market. If high‐ability workers are sufficiently more productive they impose a positive externality on low‐ability workers and should be rewarded by positive transfers. On the contrary, if productivity differences are small, high‐ability workers achieve unreasonably high wages by referring each other and reduce employment chances of low‐ability workers. In this latter case, high‐ability workers should be penalized. If optimal policy is implemented the net welfare gain of referrals rises up to 1.8%.     

Consumer inertia, firm growth and industry dynamics

We develop a model of firm size, based on the hypothesis that consumers are “locked in,” because of search costs, with firms they have patronized in the past. As a consequence, older firms have a larger clientele and are able to extract higher profits. The equilibrium of this model yields: (i) A downward sloping density of firm sizes. (ii) Older firms are less likely to exit than younger firms. (iii) Larger firms spend more on R&D.     

A model of innovation and learning with involuntary spillovers and absorptive capacity

We develop a model of innovation and learning that incorporates explicitly the need for a firm to conduct its own research and development (R&D) in order to realize involuntary spillovers from other firms’ R&D activity and the development of absorptive capacity of research firms over time. The conclusions of the model follow directly from the functional forms that are used to describe the generation and absorption of technological knowledge. The first proposition formally characterizes the steady-state rate of growth of technology for the model. The analysis also shows how some of the key features of two distinct, pure modes of organization of the production of new knowledge, the R&D model and the new localized knowledge model, are implied by our model by simply drastically changing the relative magnitude of two exogenous parameters: the ease of learning and the pace of knowledge advance. The second proposition formally characterizes the connections implied by the model between involuntary spillovers and absorptive capacity. Analysis of the long-term interactions between involuntary spillovers of knowledge and absorptive capacity provides the essential insights into an understanding of the elements of a self-sustained process of endogenous growth. The third and last formal proposition of this paper accommodates firm-level arguments and the crucial role of a firm's absorptive capacity in taking advantage of its location in clusters, as implied by the theoretical model.     

Bribery and firm survival in Vietnam: Moderating effects of market competition,credit, and institutional constraints

This paper examines the relationship between bribery and firm survival when facing different levels of market competition, credit constraints, and other institutional limitations. Using panel data from surveys of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Vietnam over a 10-year period and a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model approach, we provide empirical support for the “greasing-the-wheels” hypothesis of firm survival. Effects are found to be more pronounced for formally registered and larger firms, explained by their greater bargaining power vis-à-vis public officials. Moreover, bribery as a “risk-of-exit” reducing strategy is found only for firms not institutionally or financially constrained and for firms operating in sectors with low levels of competition.     

Intra‐industry Knowledge Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Research and Development: Evidence from China's “Silicon Valley”

This study examines a specific channel of technology diffusion from multinational enterprises to domestic firms in less developed regions: research and development (R&D) activities of multinational enterprises in the host country. Using firm‐level panel data from a Chinese science park, known as China's “Silicon Valley,” we find that the R&D stock of foreign‐owned firms has a positive effect on the productivity of domestic firms in the same industry, while the capital stock of foreign firms has no such effect. These results suggest that foreign firms' knowledge spills over within industries through their R&D activities, but not through their production activities. In addition, we find no evidence of spillovers from domestic firms or firms from Hong Kong, Macao, or Taiwan, suggesting that the size of knowledge spillovers is larger when the technology gap between source and recipient firms is larger.     

Appropriability mechanisms,innovation, and productivity: evidence from the UK

ABSTRACT

We use an extended version of the well-established Crepon, Duguet, and Mairesse model [1998. “Research, Innovation and Productivity: An Econometric Analysis at the Firm Level.” Economics of Innovation and New Technology 7 (2): 115–158] to model the relationship between appropriability mechanisms, innovation, and firm-level productivity. We enrich this model in three ways: (1) We compare estimates obtained using a broader definition of innovation spending to those that use R&D spending. (2) We assume that a firm simultaneously innovates and chooses among different appropriability methods to protect the innovation. (3) We estimate the impact of innovation output on firm productivity conditional on the choice of appropriability mechanism. We find that firms that innovate and rate formal methods for the protection of intellectual property highly are more productive than other firms, but that the same does not hold in the case of informal methods of protection, except possibly for large firms as opposed to SMEs. We also find that this result is strongest for firms in the services, trade, and utility sectors, and negative in the manufacturing sector.     

Management practices and SME performance

We examine the association between management practices and SME performance in Britain over the period 2011–2015, using a unique dataset which links survey data on management practices with firm performance data from the UK's official business register. We find that SMEs are less likely to use formal management practices than larger firms. However, such practices appear to have demonstrable benefits for those SMEs who use them, being positively associated with firm survival, growth and productivity. Our results add further weight to policy initiatives which seek to encourage SMEs to improve their management skills and capabilities.     

Job creation and job destruction in the presence of informal markets

In developing economies, the fraction of informal workers can be as high as 70% of total employment. For economies with significant informal sectors, business cycle fluctuations and labor market policy interventions can have important effects not only on the unemployment rate, but also on the allocation of workers across regulated and unregulated jobs. In this paper, using worker flows data from Brazil, we build, calibrate, and simulate a two-sector search and matching labor market model, in which firms have the choice of hiring workers formally or informally. We show that our model can explain well the main cyclical patterns that lead to those cyclical reallocations. We also show how the effect of government interventions in the labor market depend on the magnitude of the reallocation of labor across regulated and unregulated sectors. For our calibration, policies that decrease the cost of formal jobs, or increase the cost of informality, raise the share of formal employment while reducing unemployment.     

Determinants and impacts of subcontracting: evidence from India’s unorganized manufacturing sector

There are two divergent perspectives on the impact of subcontracting on firms in the informal sector. According to the benign view, formal sector firms prefer linkages with relatively modern firms in the informal sector, and subcontracting enables capital accumulation and technological improvement in the latter. According to the exploitation view, formal sector firms extract surplus from stagnant, asset-poor informal sector firms that use cheap family labour in home-based production. However, direct, firm-level evidence on the determinants and impact of subcontracting is thus far lacking in the literature. We apply a modified Heckman selection model to Indian National Sample Survey data on informal manufacturing enterprises (2005–2006). We find that home-based, relatively asset-poor, and female-owned firms are more likely to be in a subcontracting relationship. Further, we perform selectivity-corrected Oaxaca-Blinder Decomposition and calculate treatment effects to show that subcontracting benefits smaller firms, firms in industrially backward states and rural firms; it is harmful for larger firms, firms in industrially advanced states, and urban firms. Our results suggest that the effects of subcontracting are more complex than those predicted by the divergent perspectives. Policy-makers need to engage with this complexity.     

Does formality improve micro-firm performance? Evidence from the Brazilian SIMPLES program

This paper exploits an extensive Brazilian micro-enterprise survey and the 1996 introduction of a business tax reduction and simplification scheme (SIMPLES) to examine three questions. First, do high tax rates and complex tax regulations really constitute a barrier to the formalization of micro-firms? Second, does formalization improve firm performance measured along several dimensions, including revenues, employment and capital stock? Third, what are the channels through which this occurs? We find that SIMPLES led to a significant increase in formality in several dimensions. Moreover, newly created firms that opt for operating formally show higher levels of revenue and profits, employ more workers and are more capital intensive (only for those firms that have employees). The channel through which this occurs is not access to credit or contracts with larger firms. Rather, it appears that the lower cost of contracting labor leads to adopting production techniques that involve a permanent location and a larger paid labor force.     

Informality,innovation, and aggregate productivity growth

This paper investigates how the costs of innovation in the formal sector temper or magnify the impacts of traditional policy levers such as taxation on sectoral choice. I embed a decision whether to operate formally or informally into a richer, general equilibrium model. Formal firms are subject to taxation, but they can improve their productivity through process innovation. Informal firms can potentially avoid taxation, and their productivity is determined by productivity growth in the formal sector. I find that changing tax rates from 50% to 60% decreases formal‐sector participation by 20.9%; however, this percentage falls by 10% when the cost of innovation is lower in the formal sector. The model also illustrates how changes in tax policy affect total factor productivity growth by limiting both the number of formal‐sector firms and the intensity of innovation. These results indicate a potential mechanism to induce firms to operate formally or mitigate harmful impacts of necessary tax changes.     

Learning about match quality and the use of referrals

The firm?s decision to use referrals as a hiring method is studied in a theoretical model of the labor market. The labor market is characterized by search frictions and uncertain quality of the match between a worker and a job. Using referrals increases the arrival rate of applicants and provides more accurate signals regarding a worker?s suitability for the job. Consistent with the data, referred workers are predicted to have higher wage, higher productivity and lower separation rates and these differentials decline with tenure. The model is extended by introducing heterogeneity in firm productivity and allowing the endogenous determination of signal accuracy. High productivity firms are predicted to invest more in increasing signal accuracy and use referrals to a lesser extent.     

Formal and informal external linkages and firms�� innovative strategies. A cross-country comparison

Firms increasingly rely upon external actors for their innovation process. Interaction with these actors may occur formally (i.e. through a collaboration agreement) or informally (i.e. external actors acts as sources of information). We analyze the reasons why firms consider it to be important to develop formal and informal external linkages in the innovation process by looking at the role played by firms’ innovative strategies and by taking into account the possibility that a complementarity or substitutive relationship might exist between formal and informal linkages. Data are from the Third Community Innovation Survey (CIS 3), where we have access to firm level micro-data from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.     

Firm size distribution and employment fluctuations: Theory and evidence

We show that the firm-size distribution is an important determinant of the relationship between an industry's employment and output. A theoretical model predicts that changes in demand for an industry's output have larger effects on employment, resulting from adjustments at both the intensive and extensive margin, in industries characterised by a distribution that has a lower density of large firms. Industry-specific shape parameters of the firm size distributions are estimated using firm-level data from Germany, Sweden and the UK, and used to augment a relationship between industry-level employment and output. The empirical results align with the predictions of the theory.     

The relations among accounting conservatism,institutional investors and earnings manipulation

Most scholars have indicated corporations using accounting conservatism to reduce earnings manipulation, although certain scholars believe that firms have more incentive to increase earnings manipulation. Institutional investors play an important external monitoring role, and affect firm's earnings manipulation. Previous studies adopted accruals as an earnings manipulation proxy to detect the relationship among accounting conservatism, institutional investor shareholdings, and earnings manipulation. We further investigate the relationship among accounting conservatism, institutional investor shareholdings, and earnings manipulation by using Benford's law. Our results indicate that firms with more conservative financial reporting have less probability of engaging in earnings-manipulative activities. We also find the negative association between earnings management and institutional investor shareholdings. However, if corporate financial statements tend toward conservatism, institutional investor shareholdings could increase managers' incentive to manage earnings. Our findings have important implications for investors to make investment decisions.     

Democracy favors access to credit of firms

Access to credit is one of the main obstacles for the growth of firms. We test the hypothesis that democracy exerts an impact on access to credit. We perform regressions at the firm-level on a large dataset of 46,000 firms in 108 countries. We find evidence of a negative relationship between democracy and credit constraints for firms. We further establish that democracy contributes to reduce borrower discouragement and leads to more bank loan approval decisions. Our key finding is therefore that democracy favors firms' access to credit. Our work contributes to the debate on the impact of democracy on economic development by considering one firm-level channel of transmission.     

Adjustment Costs, Firm Responses, and Micro vs. Macro Labor Supply Elasticities: Evidence from Danish Tax Records

We show that the effects of taxes on labor supply are shaped by interactions between adjustment costs for workers and hours constraints set by firms. We develop a model in which firms post job offers characterized by an hours requirement and workers pay search costs to find jobs. We present evidence supporting three predictions of this model by analyzing bunching at kinks using Danish tax records. First, larger kinks generate larger taxable income elasticities. Second, kinks that apply to a larger group of workers generate larger elasticities. Third, the distribution of job offers is tailored to match workers' aggregate tax preferences in equilibrium. Our results suggest that macro elasticities may be substantially larger than the estimates obtained using standard microeconometric methods.     

The effects of economic reforms on manufacturing dualism: Evidence from India

Dualism is a pervasive feature of the manufacturing sectors of less-developed countries, with large differences in productivity between the informal and the formal sectors. Policy distortions are viewed as an important factor behind the prevalence of manufacturing dualism. We examine whether tariff reforms, industrial de-licensing and the withdrawal of reservation of products for small firms implemented since the mid-1980s have had any effects on efficiency differentials between informal and formal firms in Indian manufacturing. We find strong evidence that economic reforms have exacerbated dualism by increasing the productivity differentials between the more efficient formal firms and the less efficient informal firms.