Knowledge spillovers from foreign direct investment in R&D: Evidence from Japanese firm-level data

This study uses firm-level panel data from the Japanese manufacturing industries and examines whether foreign direct investment generates intra-industry knowledge spillovers to domestic firms. The analysis found positive effects of R&D stocks of foreign firms on the productivity of domestic firms, while effects of capital stocks of foreign firms were absent, suggesting that knowledge of foreign firms spills over through their R&D activities, but not through their production activities. In addition, we found that the extent of spillovers from R&D stock of foreign firms is substantially larger than spillovers from R&D stock of domestic firms.     

Global value chains and servicification of manufacturing: Evidence from firm-level data

Recent literature on global value chains (GVCs) has mainly focused on manufacturing firms’ global sourcing and investment strategies. Our question here is that, if the manufacturing firms established foreign manufacturing plants and engaged in sourcing inputs and exporting outputs, have they changed their domestic employment composition toward service workers? This is what we call servicification of manufacturing firms in this paper. To answer this question, using Korean firm-establishments matched data, we examine changes in the shares of service employment in manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2013, when those firms are participating in both import-and-export and foreign direct investment (i.e., GVC firms). We find that the two-way trading firms that own manufacturing plants in foreign countries—and particularly in nearby foreign countries—have changed their domestic employment structures to increase the number of service workers they employ. Moreover, the relatively greater increase in the share of R&D workers than of wholesale-and-retail workers serves as further evidence of the servicification of domestic manufacturing. Overall, our findings suggest that Korean firms who engage in GVCs through both trade and foreign direct investment have reorganized domestic labor structure to be able to provide high value-added headquarter services for their manufacturing plants that are closely located in foreign countries.     

From firm-level imports to aggregate productivity: Evidence from Korean manufacturing firm data

Using Korean manufacturing firm-level data, this paper confirms that the use of imported inputs leads to increased productivity and that larger firms are more likely to use imported inputs. We find as a result that firm-level import decisions explain a non-trivial fraction of the fluctuations in manufacturing aggregate productivity in Korea over the period between 2006 and 2012. Specifically, our estimation results show that Korean manufacturing aggregate TFP declined by 8.7% during the Global Financial Crisis, about one-third of which is attributable to a contraction in firm-level import intensity. The main findings of this paper suggest a possible link between the recent global slowdown in productivity and the slowdown in global trade.     

Thai manufacturing small and medium sized enterprise technical efficiency: Evidence from firm-level industrial census data

Thai manufacturing small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) face intense competition in domestic and foreign markets. Given their importance to the economic development of the country it is important to have a clear understanding of their readiness to face the rigors of international competition, including the barriers and specific problems that they face. This study uses a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and technical inefficiency effects model to analyze the technical efficiency of Thai manufacturing SMEs and key factors impacting upon it. Analysis of cross-sectional data from a 2007 census of Thai manufacturing SMEs indicates that their weighted average technical efficiency is approximately 50 percent, signifying a high level of technical inefficiency which is reducing potential output. The inefficiency effects model reveals that firm size, firm age, skilled labor, ownership characteristics and location are firm-specific factors that significantly affect the technical inefficiency of production. Key measures to improve the technical efficiency of Thai manufacturing SMEs are an adequate supply of inputs, access to credit facilities, extensive infrastructural development and training programs for employees.     

The effect of foreign competition on UK employment and wages: Evidence from firm-level panel data

The Effect of Foreign Competition on UK Employment and Wages: Evidence from Firm-Level Panel Data. —This paper contributes to the sparse empirical literature on the effects of foreign competition on domestic employment and wages. The authors estimate a structural labour demand equation on UK firm-level panel data between 1982 and 1989 and several wage equations. When they restrict the sample to the manufacturing sector only, they find for the unionized firms that foreign competition has a negative effect on both wages and on employment. However, when UK manufacturing firms face only a few rivals, foreign competition has a positive effect on wages, but no effect on employment.     

The “news view” of economic fluctuations: Evidence from aggregate Japanese data and sectoral US data

This paper uses aggregate Japanese data and sectoral US data to explore the properties of the joint behavior of stock prices and total factor productivity (TFP) with the aim of highlighting data patterns that are useful for evaluating business cycle theories. The approach used follows that presented in [Beaudry, P., Portier, F., 2004. News, stock prices and economic fluctuations. Working paper 10548. NBER]. The main findings are that (i) in both Japan and the US, innovations in stock prices that are contemporaneously orthogonal to TFP precede most of the long-run movements in total factor productivity and (ii) such stock prices innovations do not affect US sectoral TFPs contemporaneously, but do precede TFP increases in those sectors that are driving US TFP growth, namely durable goods, and among them equipment sectors. J. Japanese Int. Economies 19 (4) (2005) 635–652.     

The causal effects of exporting on domestic workers: A firm-level analysis using Japanese data

Japan has experienced rapid growth of non-regular workers under globalization in the 2000s. This study seeks to identify the causal effects of exporting on the changes in the share of non-regular workers and the growth of worker-hours (employment times working-hours) in Japanese manufacturing and wholesale sectors using extensive firm-level data. I employ a propensity score matching technique and investigate whether firms that start exporting experience higher increase in the share of non-regular workers and higher growth of worker-hours than do non-exporters. First, I find positive effects on the growth of worker-hours in manufacturing but not in wholesale. Second, contrary to public fears, I find little evidence that exporting results in the increase in the share of non-regular workers in both manufacturing and wholesale.     

Information related service trade within firms: evidence from firm-level data in Germany

Review of World Economics - Multi-unit firms have productivity advantages over competitors because of their use of a non-rival asset—firm-specific knowledge—in several units. Using...     

Citation success: Evidence from economic history journal publications

This study examines the determinants of citation success among authors who have recently published their work in economic history journals. Besides offering clues about how to improve one's scientific impact, our citation analysis also sheds light on the state of the field of economic history. Consistent with our expectations, we find that full professors, authors appointed at economics and history departments, and authors working in Anglo-Saxon and German countries are more likely to receive citations than other scholars. Long and co-authored articles are also a factor for citation success. We find similar patterns when assessing the same authors' citation success in economics journals. As a novel feature, we demonstrate that the diffusion of research — publication of working papers, as well as conference and workshop presentations — has a first-order positive impact on the citation rate.     

Financial development and economic growth: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the relationship between financial development and economic growth for the case of China over the period 1952–2001. After considering the time series characteristics of the dataset, a multivariate vector autoregressive (VAR) framework is used as an appropriate specification and the long-run relationship among financial development, growth and other key growth factors is analyzed in a theoretically based high dimensional system by identification of co-integrating vectors through tests of over-identifying restrictions. The empirical results suggest that there exists a unidirectional causality from economic growth to financial development, conclusions departing distinctively from those in the previous studies.     

The determinants of exit from institutions and the price elasticity of institutional care: Evidence from Japanese micro-level data

This study examines how the price mechanism affects the length of residents’ at institutions and their destination after exit. Using micro-level data from The Survey on Care Service Providers compiled by the Japanese government, we show that the price elasticity of the hazard of exit was 1.7 from welfare care facilities was 1.8 from health care facilities. Moreover, our estimates reveal that a 1 percentage point increase in copayments leads to an increase in the probability of returning home by 0.04% for residents of welfare care facilities and 3.7% for those of health care facilities and a decrease in the probability of being re-hospitalized by 3.3% for residents of health care facilities and 1.9% for those of medical care facilities. Our findings demonstrate that an appropriate price policy may work well to shorten clients’ length of stay and to reduce the number of the socially institutionalized.     

The Japanese–U.S. trade balance and the yen: Evidence from industry data

While it is often assumed that a country's trade balance will improve in the long-run if its currency is allowed to depreciate, this is not necessarily the case for specific goods. In the short run, the opposite might even take place, as fixed quantities and rising import prices cause the trade balance to deteriorate. In this paper, we apply cointegration methodology to assess the short- and long-run impact of fluctuations in the yen–dollar real exchange rate on Japan's trade balance with the U.S. for 117 industries. We find that depreciation causes the trade balance to improve in the long-run for about one-third of Japanese industries. Most short-run effects are in the same direction, indicating a quick improvement in these industries’ trade balance, rather than a period of deterioration such as a “J-curve.”     

School attendance and economic shocks: Evidence from rural Zimbabwe

Unpredicted shocks such as weather, pests or price changes affect agricultural households negatively or positively. The shocks have two opposite effects (income and substitution) on parents’ investments in the human capital of their children, and it is not predictable from theory whether the income effect or the substitution effect of a shock has a greater impact on the investments. Therefore, it is unknown whether human capital investments (i.e. sending children to school rather than having them work) are procyclical or countercyclical. In this paper we show how hyperinflation may affect investments in the education of children by their parents using three data-sets from Zimbabwe. We find that human capital investments are countercyclical (the substitution effect dominates) in rural areas of Zimbabwe during a shock. Therefore, policymakers in Zimbabwe need to be worried about decreased schooling of children during positive shocks in the rural areas.     

Outsourcing and productivity: Evidence from Korean data

This paper aims to provide the first investigation of the productivity effect of outsourcing by using the Korean industry data at the three-digit ISIC level. We find that there are positive productivity gains from material outsourcing. The impact of material outsourcing increases when we account for the share of imports from China. This is due to the growth of Chinese exports to Korea over the recent years. Moreover, the results also suggest that during our sample period Korea's experiment with service outsourcing did not lead to an increase in its productivity.     

Japanese money demand: evidence from regional monthly data

This study estimates the Japanese money demand function by household using seasonally adjusted panel data following Fujiki and Mulligan (Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan, vol. 14(1–2), 1996a, 1996b, pp. 65–103, 53–78). The most plausible estimates of the income elasticity of money demand are in the range from 1.28 to 1.35 for the period from 1990 to 1995. These results are robust with respect to the choice of scale variables, and consistent with the estimates based on seasonally unadjusted monthly data and annual data. The stable relationship obtained from regional panel data provides useful information with which to judge the stability of the money demand function for the central bankers.     

Aid and economic growth in LDCs: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper uses a disaggregated cross-national time-series aid data and a Least Squares Dummy Variables (LSDV) model to investigate the effects of aid on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that, contrary to what some critics of aid argue, aid has a small but positive and significant effect on economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa. A simultaneous equation specification of the model shows that aid affects economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa directly and indirectly through increased domestic savings and investment.     

Economic research and economic growth: Evidence from East Asian economies

Based upon page counts of articles published in 60 quality economics journals, the role of economic research is examined for five East Asian economies. In Hong Kong, causality runs bi-directionally between research productivity and economic growth; in Japan, the causal effects tend to be one direction from economic growth to research publications; in Korea and Taiwan, causality runs the other way around from publications to growth; and in Singapore, the causal effects are small and insignificant. Socioeconomic differences in each economy help to explain the various causal directions found.     

Negative economic shocks and child schooling: Evidence from rural Malawi

This study investigates the impacts of negative economic shocks on child schooling in households of rural Malawi, one of the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Both individually-reported and community-level shocks are investigated. There is evidence that community-level shocks negatively impact the school enrolment of children. The point estimates suggest that this effect is larger when shocks and school enrolment are reported by men as compared with women. However, we cannot conclude with statistical confidence that the impact of idiosyncratic shocks is larger when reported by males than when reported by females. Similarly, although the point estimates suggest that the impact of community-level shocks on the school enrolment of children is larger than that of idiosyncratic shocks, we cannot conclude with statistical significance that the impacts of community-level and idiosyncratic shocks are different.