Productivity and Corporate Governance in Smaller Firms

Our starting point was to argue that the entrepreneur is central to the organisation of production in smaller firms. We also contended that it was crucial to understand how differences in corporate governance structures affect productivity. This is particularly important given that many small firms have relatively unsophisticated and non-complex governance structures. Our results show positive, and significant, effects from the founding entrepreneur, the board of directors and the management team on productivity. We also find that the majority of smaller firms face increasing returns to scale. In total, our results cast serious doubts on the relevance of "black box" theories of production which exclude a role for the entrepreneur.     

Productivity and Entrepreneurial Chraracteristics in New Japanese Firms

In this paper, we estimate the production function of new Japanese firms and examine whether the total factor productivity is affected by the human capital and gender of entrepreneurs. Empirical results show decreasing returns to scale of production, which verifies the assumption of production functions in many previous studies on entrepreneurship. Further, it is shown that the entrepreneur's age has a significantly negative effect on productivity, and the negative effect increases after 60 years of age. Although related business experience before startup has a significantly positive effect, the magnitude is limited and cannot overcome the negative effect of age. The results indicate the importance of starting up while young, at the latest, before 60 years of age.     

异质性企业出口、技术创新与生产率动态效应研究

本文探讨了异质性企业出口、技术创新与生产率的动态关系.在异质性企业垄断竞争模型的分析框架下,我们构建了企业出口、创新与生产率的动态结构模型,并通过参数化函数形式建立了计量模型.基于2005-2007年中国电子通信行业的企业面板数据,本研究采用biprobit、非线性最小二乘估计等模型对企业出口、技术创新与生产率的关系进行实证研究.研究结果表明,企业出口和创新的决策及其联动作用促进企业生产率的提高;企业的生产率、资本存量、劳动力投入和出口市场冲击是影响企业自选择行为的异质性因素;投资决策的回报随着企业生产率的提高而提高,因此生产率高的企业会自选择做出该投资决策以获得更大利润.我们的研究从理论和实证的视角在一个整体性的框架中验证了自选择效应、出口学习效应和生产率动态效应,同时对中国出口、创新和生产率的现状提出相应政策建议.     

IT and Marketing Strategies in Service Firms

Recent developments in information technology (IT) are having a major effect on the way in which service firms are organised and produce their services. Much of the investment in IT has been made as a result of service firms' pursuit of a particular marketing strategy. However, investment in IT often brings with it such a variety of attributes that, once installed, a thorough reappraisal of the appropriate marketing strategy to be followed is required.     

Merging Professional Service Firms

Accountants, lawyers, consultants and advertising agents have all been merging as their clients demand global and diversified services from their professional advisors. This article reports on a three-year study of three such mergers. Notwithstanding the widespread belief that business now moves @ the speed of thought, the author concludes that, in most cases, managers should allow the process of integration to evolve gradually. However, this does not mean doing nothing: she identifies eight ways in which managers can facilitate the process.     

Antecedents of ERP in Service Firms

There have been studies of the adoption of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, the need for research within service sector is increasing. Thus, this study investigates adoption of ERP systems within service firms by a survey. Furthermore, antecedents of ERP adoption are investigated. The study proposes providing an insight about enterprise resource planning (ERP) adoption, theoretical background illustrates the pertinent literature on ERP systems in services and identifies antecedents of ERP adoption in the extant literature. The findings revealed that the majority of respondents, 82%, have adopted ERP. This study highlights and explains the reasons of deployment of ERP systems in service firms.     

筛选效应、异质企业内生集聚与城市生产率

本文通过一个改进的新新经济地理异质企业模型考察城市与企业之间的双向选择机制.理论分析表明,高效企业能制定较低的价格、占有较大的市场,因此倾向进入大城市,而低效企业倾向选择较小的城市;城市越大,对企业的门槛效率要求越高.大城市的企业效率分布曲线相比小城市有较高的左侧截尾,而小城市相对于大城市存在右侧截尾.本文利用中国工业企业微观数据检验企业固定效率在城市间的分布特征,估计显示城市效率门槛随城市规模增长而增长,筛选效应至少相当于传统集聚经济的1/5～2/5,但集聚经济和筛选效应对不同行业的企业影响有所差异.分析还表明,降低区间交易成本有助于城市间效率分布的趋同,市场一体化将提升中小城市生产率、缩小城市间差距.     

出口和生产率:基于异质性企业的实证研究综述

新新贸易理论框架下异质性企业出口和生产率的关系可以用两种假说来概括——"自我选择出口"和"出口导致增长"。文章回顾了十多年来学者们用各个国家的企业数据对这两种假说的验证,对比和评析了相关的研究方法、研究结论、实证结果的原因等,对我国出口企业"生产率悖论"的原因进行总结与探讨,并提出了未来的研究思路与方向。     

Internationalisation,Innovation and Productivity: How Do Firms Differ in Italy?

This paper addresses the issue of intra‐industry heterogeneity and internationalisation. We show that, after controlling for sector, location, firm age and size, Italian manufacturing companies exhibit different economic and innovative performance according to their involvement in foreign activities. In particular, exporters show intermediate innovative performance between non‐internationalised firms and those carrying out foreign production. Multinationals with a lower commitment to foreign markets, i.e. with non‐manufacturing activities abroad only, exhibit a higher productivity than exporters but they do not appear to innovate more than the latter. Heterogeneity in productivity is robust to controlling for innovation inputs and outputs, suggesting that the difference in economic performance cannot be entirely attributed to different innovative activities, and that the involvement in international operations can be a distinct channel of knowledge accumulation.     

The Internationalization of Service Firms in China: A Comparative Analysis with Manufacturing Firms

In this article, we expand upon the springboard perspective of emerging markets in the service sector. We investigate the phenomenon of service firm internationalization in China and the distinct differences between service and manufacturing firms during international expansion. Using dynamic analysis of historical data for 363 service firms and 569 manufacturing firms from 2001 to 2007, we find that the internationalization of service firms in China is different from that of manufacturing firms in terms of resource requirement and experience exploitation. The internationalization of service firms relies more on international experience than corporate resources. Furthermore, we also identify the structural differences between hard and soft service industries. In China, identifiable intangible assets are found to be more important for the international expansion of hard service firms than they are for soft service firms. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

中国对外直接投资企业生产率影响因素研究

本文选取1999-2010年沪深证券交易所上市的对外直接投资企业为研究样本,在对外直接投资理论的基础上结合资源基础理论、产业组织理论、制度理论,从不同视角分析中国对外直接投资企业生产率的影响因素。实证结果发现,对外直接投资企业的资本劳动比、员工受教育程度、企业运营成本、行业内竞争程度、市场占有率对其生产率有正向影响;企业规模、国家所有权水平对其生产率有负向影响。同时本文还揭示了现实中出现的与传统理论不符的现象,如投资到发达国家反而会使母国企业生产率降低、企业经营成本越高其生产率也越高等现象,本文结合实际针对这些现象给出了合理解释,并对如何提高中国对外直接投资企业生产率分别向企业和政府提出了政策建议。     

Service Firms Heterogeneity,International Collaborations and Export Participation

The paper investigates the relationship between service firms’ international collaboration strategies and export decision. It proposes an extension of the recent class of models of firm heterogeneity, intermediation and international trade according to which service firms can engage in a collaboration agreement with a foreign partner in order to favour their market access and distribution activities overseas. The paper analyses the empirical relevance of this model by means of a new survey dataset providing information on the internationalization activities of 814 Norwegian firms in the service sectors for the period 2004–2006. The econometric results point out that international collaboration, both on existing and on innovative services, is indeed an important factor to foster service firms’ decision to enter the export market.     

Imported Intermediates,Absorptive Capacity and Productivity: Evidence from Ghanaian Manufacturing Firms

This paper analyses whether the use of imported intermediates improves productivity using firm‐level panel data of manufacturing firms in Ghana covering the period between 1991 and 2002. This includes examining the importance of absorptive capacity (ABC) in enhancing the productivity gains from imported intermediates. We propose lagged relative productivity as a new measure of ABC. For any given period, ABC is defined as the natural logarithm of a firm's total factor productivity (TFP) in the previous period relative to the firm's initial TFP. An alternative measure of ABC considers real value added per worker in lieu of TFP. Overall, we find that firms with high levels of ABC derive productivity gains from the contemporaneous and prior use of imported intermediates, particularly for firms operating in the input‐intensive industries. Our findings are robust to different specifications of the base model and different estimation techniques.     

Trade,Tariffs and Total Factor Productivity: The Case of Spanish Firms

The aim of this paper is to examine the sensitivity of total factor productivity (TFP) to foreign competition in the case of a European country. Using the Olley and Pakes method, we calculate the TFP of Spanish manufacturing firms and study the impact of EU tariffs and the presence of foreign products and imports on TFP at the firm level. Applying the System‐GMM method, we find that TFP is negatively impacted by European tariffs, whereas competition in the form of the increased presence of foreign products in the domestic market and firm imports leads to improvements in the TFP. Moreover, these two effects are complementary. We also find evidence of important asymmetries among firms depending on their involvement in foreign markets.     

The Size and Growth of UK Manufacturing and Service Firms

This paper investigates the relationship between firm size and growth for UK manufacturing and services over the period 1991 to 1995. We test for size effects on growth, using models which incorporate the influences of previous growth and industry membership. The results from the analysis suggest that for both manufacturing and services, small firms tend to grow faster than larger firms. The growth of manufacturing firms appears to persist over time, whereas this is not the case for service firms. Small firms tend to have more variable growth rates than their larger counterparts in manufacturing and services. This suggests that large firms may enjoy advantages associated with diversified operations which make them less susceptible to periods of extremely high or low growth.     

A Location Choice Approach for Professional Service Firms

This paper discusses the use of the factor rating method for service facility site selection. The method combines the results of objective mathematical location choice models with other qualitative criteria to obtain a single quantitative score upon which the location decision is based. The simplicity and ease of understanding of the method, added to its ability to incorporate both subjective and objective factors, make it a useful decision tool. The method is particularly suitable for small professional service firms which may not have the resources to uti- lize more sophisticated location choice models.     

Organization Capital and Expected Returns in Service and Non‐Service Firms: Evidence from Thailand

Organization capital provides firms with competitive advantage, but because of its intangible and movable nature, investors view firms with high organization capital as risker and demand additional risk premia. Similar to Eisfeldt and Papanikolaou (2013), we find that firms in the Stock Exchange of Thailand with highest organization capital earn abnormal returns of 0.75% per month relative to the four‐factor asset pricing model. In addition, we also document that the organization capital risk premium is more relevant for service firms than non‐service ones.     

专业服务企业协同创新探讨

在当前经济与社会变革进一步深入的背景下,专业服务企业的发展对国家经济结构转型具有重要意义。为了促进专业服务企业的发展,使其在国家经济发展中扮演更重要的角色,专业服务企业协同的创新是必要的,使专业服务企业在促进产业结构的调整与升级中发挥积极作用。