Firm heterogeneity and aggregate business services exports: Micro evidence from Belgium,France, Germany and Spain

This paper uses detailed micro data on services exports at the firm–destination–service level to analyse the role of firm heterogeneity in shaping aggregate services exports in Belgium, France, Germany and Spain from 2003 to 2007. We decompose the level and the growth of aggregate services exports into different trade margins paying special attention to firm heterogeneity within countries. We find that the weak export growth of France is at least partly due to poor performance by small exporters. By contrast, small exporters are the most dynamic contributors to the aggregate exports of Belgium, Germany and Spain. Our results highlight the importance of firm heterogeneity in understanding aggregate export growth.     

国际市场进入模式选择与企业异质性：一个文献综述

生产率差异是决定企业国际市场进入模式选择的重要因素。本文通过梳理近年来异质性企业贸易与投资文献,阐释了企业如何在贸易、水平型FDI、垂直型FDI和复合型FDI之间进行选择以及选择FDI的企业会采取何种进入方式的问题。现有的异质性企业贸易与投资模型较好地解释了发达国家的经验事实,但在企业异质性的来源、消费者需求结构以及发展中国家的市场扭曲等方面,异质性企业贸易和投资模型仍需进一步深入研究。     

Regional economic integration and multinational firm strategies

This paper analyzes the effects of regional economic integrations on investment patterns among multinational firms. We develop a model in which heterogeneous firms decide on the optimal foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies for serving trade-integrated regions consisting of asymmetric countries: developed and developing nations. Following reduced trade costs within the trade-integrated region, our model shows that integrating into a regional economic zone affects firms with relatively low productivity levels to enter developing nation within the region via complex FDI – a firm activity of engaging in multiple types of FDI. Specifically, we show that depending on the size of the region respective to the home country, complex FDI involves different investment patterns. Using Korean firm- and plant-level data, we specify a binary choice model to link firms’ choice of FDI strategies with their productivity levels and trade-integrated regions. Our empirical results are consistent with the theoretical implications.     

Market Orientation,Competitive Strategy and Firm Performance

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the mediating effects of a firm's competitive strategy in the market orientation-performance relationship. Based on a sample of 371 manufacturing firms in China, evidence was found that the three dimensions of market orientation exert different effects on competitive strategy and performance. Among them, customer orientation has the strongest association with competitive strategy and market performance. This lends credence to a componentwise approach on the study of the relationship between market orientation and performance. The results of structural equation analyses indicate that the mediating effect of competitive strategy is mainly revealed in innovation strategy, the most vital factor in creating superior value for the company in the emerging market. Limitations of this study and implications for future studies are discussed.     

我国商号保护的立法检讨及其完善

商号权设立的目的是为了避免不同商主体使用同一商号而造成混淆。有关商号的立法散见于多个法律法规之中,商号的立法存在着诸多缺陷,导致了商号权得不到有效的保护,经常发生商号权与商标权冲突的现象。为了更好地保护商号权,有必要完善商号登记注册制度,保护商号权的在先权利,加强对驰名商号的保护,完善商号侵权的法律责任,建立商号侵权的司法救济措施。     

Multiproduct firms and antidumping duties: Evidence from India

ABSTRACT

With the growing availability of high-quality higher-dimension data in international trade, many new stylized facts have also emerged. One such stylized fact is that multiproduct firms play a significant role in international trade. In this paper, we investigate the effect of US antidumping duties on the exports of Indian multiproduct firms. In particular, we study whether US antidumping duties lead the Indian exporter to alter their product-scope to third country markets (aka to trade partners other than the US). Using a unique transaction-level data from India, we find that firms affected by US antidumping duties increased the number of products exported to other destinations by about 0.7 products, on average. This translates to a substantial 40% increase in the product-scope of these firms because a typical Indian exporting firm exported an average of 1.8 products to a given destination in our sample. We also find that firms whose products spanned multiple sectors drove most of this increase. However, we do not find any difference in the product-scope response of firms producing differentiated vs. those producing homogenous products. We find our results to be robust across various specification and sample size changes.     

基于企业异质性的出口自选择行为研究综述

近年来,国际贸易理论的研究经历了一个革命性的变化,学者们开始运用企业层面的微观数据分析出口行为和生产力之间的关系,并提出了出口的自选择假说和学习效应假说。文章对这一领域截至目前的理论和实证文献进行梳理和总结,并展望未来的研究前景。     

Firm growth in the Swedish retail and wholesale industries

To identify the determinants of firm growth in the Swedish retail and wholesale industries during 2000–2004, we analyse a sample of 400 limited liability companies using quantile regression techniques. Firm growth was mainly found to depend upon time-invariant firm-specific effects, supporting Penrose's [1959 Penrose, E. 1959. The theory of the growth of the firm, 4, New York: Oxford University Press.  [Google Scholar]. The theory of the growth of the firm (4th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press] suggestion that internal resources such as firm culture, brand loyalty, entrepreneurial skills, and so on are important determinants of firm growth.     

企业契约的利益相关者模型

企业是利益相关者参与的一系列契约的联结.利益相关者包括股东、经理人员、债权人、供应商、消费者、工人以及社会公众等,他们将自己所拥有的资源投入到企业,同时也就拥有了不同的企业所有权.企业所有权包括索取权(包括固定索取权、变动索取权和剩余索取权)和控制权(包括固定控制权和剩余控制权),而企业所有权安排则是在制度环境、供求关系、资源投入量、资源的信号显示机制、资源可抵押性、资产专用性、风险选择和组织化程度等因素的影响下,利益相关者利益冲突与协调的结果.这些因素的不断变化之特征,决定企业所有权安排是一个动态的过程,它具有状态依存特征.     

Firm migration in the Swedish wholesale trade sector

This article analyzes the determinants of firm migration in the Swedish wholesale trade sector using a unique dataset covering over 10,000 Swedish wholesale trade firms during the years 2000–2004. The results indicate that there are negative correlations between profits, firm age, and firm size and the probability of firm migration. There is a positive correlation between firm growth in the previous year and firm migration, indicating that growth opportunities that cannot be realized at the present location are an important motivation for migration.     

The Managerial Law Firm and the Globalization of Legal Ethics

The processes of economic integration induced by globalization have brought about a certain type of legal practice that challenges the core values of legal ethics. Law firms seeking to represent the interests of internationally active corporate clients must embrace and systematically apply concepts of strategic management and planning and install corporate business structures to sustain competition for lucrative clients. These measures bear a high conflict potential with the core values of legal ethics. However, we observe in parallel a global consolidation of these core values through an enhanced cooperation of national professional bodies, the use of international codes, and comparative legal ethics teaching and research. Furthermore, state regulation of the legal profession is concerned with preserving the core values of legal ethics to conserve the lawyer’s role in upholding the rule of law. This article defends that legal ethics is adapting to the pressures exerted by “managerial” approaches to legal practice without this altering core values that underlie legal ethics.

Uncertainty and Growth of the Firm

Using data from a survey of 1,097 small and medium-sized non-listed Dutch firms we investigate the relation between growth of the firm and uncertainty. We focus on the impact of sales uncertainty on various types of investment. We find that sales uncertainty, measured by the conditional variance, has a mixed impact on various investment decisions. We include an analysis of the relevance of financial structure and firm size on the growth-uncertainty relation.     

Global Markets,the Global Consumer and International Retailing

This paper discusses the standardisation/differentiation debate within the context of the much neglected retail sector, and explores the contribution that such factors as consumer homogeneity and the creation of trading blocs make to this debate. These issues are reviewed within the framework of the required conditions for successful standardisation; that global market segments and global economies of scale exist, and that a distrubution infrastructure is available to realise these potential economies of scale world-wide. Retail companies can derive economies from sourcing, distribution and many aspects of marketing both within and across trading blocs, and should therefore begin to identify, in a more focussed manner, their new position within the international marketplace.     

Do exports generate higher productivity? Evidence from Slovenia

I use matched sampling techniques to analyze whether firms that start exporting become more productive, controlling for the self-selection into export markets. To this end, I use micro data of Slovenian manufacturing firms operating in the period 1994-2000. Overall I find that export entrants become more productive once they start exporting. The productivity gap between exporters and their domestic counterparts increases further over time. These results also hold at the industry level and are robust to other controls that may be associated with increased productivity, such as private ownership. Using information on the (firm-level) destination of exports, I find that the productivity gains are higher for firms exporting towards high income regions.     

Practice Makes Profit: Business Practices and Firm Success

Which business practices set successful firms apart from others? We address this question using data from an official survey of almost 3000 New Zealand firms. Questions cover: leadership, planning practices, customer and supplier focus, employee practices, quality and process monitoring, benchmarking, community and social responsibility, innovation, IT use, business structure and the competitive environment. Some of these are internal practices reflecting a firm’s resources and capabilities; some are characteristics of the external environment. We find that capital investment choices, R&;D practices, market research and a range of employee practices are positively associated with firm success; industry structure is also a key determinant of success. The association between specific business practices and firm success is mostly independent of firm size, age and industrial sector, other than for export marketing.     

Firm Growth and Liquidity Constraints: A Dynamic Analysis

Using a large unbalanced panel data set of Portuguese manufacturing firms surviving over the period from 1990 to 2001, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether liquidity constraints faced by business firms affect firm growth. We use a GMM-system to estimate a dynamic panel data model of firm growth that incorporates cash flow as a measure of liquidity constraints and persistence of growth. The model is estimated for all size classes, including micro firms. Our findings reveal that smaller and younger firms have higher growth-cash flow sensitivities than larger and more mature firms. This is consistent with the suggestion that financial constraints on firm growth may be relatively more severe for small and young firms. Nevertheless, the same finding can be interpreted in a different way if we consider the more recent literature which interpret the higher investment/cash flow sensitivity of younger and smaller firm in absence of financial market imperfection as the outcome of these firms reaction to the fact that realisation of their cash flows reveals them the direction to go in presence of uncertainty of their growth prospect. Besides, firms that were small and young at the beginning of the sample period exhibited more persistent growth than those that were large and old. Finally, these results have significant policy implications.      

The Resource-Based Theory of the Firm and Firm Survival

This paper examines the determinants of firm survival. We use hazard models to test a number of hypotheses mainly drawn from the Resource-Based Theory of the Firm. According to the Resource-Based View the ability of a firm to develop distinct capabilities enhances its ability to adapt to the changing competitive environment and improves its survival prospects. The results confirm that firms that develop firm-specific assets through advertising and making R&D (independently of the technological intensity of the industry) enjoy better survival prospects. Furthermore, failure risk increases up to about 20 years of trading, and then decreases to later rise in line with liability of “adolescence” and “senescence.”      

区域市场营销与企业市场营销的关系研究

在全球化时代,经济、社会、文化、人才等资源的区域化乃至全球化流通以及"产业集聚"使得区域必须运用营销思想来进行规划和运营。而区域市场营销与企业市场营销在营销实质上是相同的,都是以顾客为中心,围绕着顾客的需要和愿望来开展的营销活动,都要面临市场竞争并借助促销手段来追求双赢结果;但在具体操作上,二者既有联系又有区别。