The returns to exporting: evidence from UK firms

Abstract The question of learning versus self‐selection has dominated the micro‐econometric literature on firm export decisions without leading to any firm conclusions. In part this reflects the limited information content of the data typically used. In this paper we use survey data on UK firms to offer some new insights into this debate. We find that the majority of firms report benefits to exporting across a wide range of performance measures, including size, profitability, and the introduction of new products. These effects do not decline as the number of years of exporting rises if the export intensity of the firm rises.     

Shocks to bank capital: evidence from UK banks at home and away

This article assesses how shocks to bank capital may influence a bank's portfolio behaviour using novel evidence from a UK bank panel data set from a period that predates the recent financial crisis. Focusing on the behaviour of bank loans, we extract the dynamic response of a bank to innovations in its capital and in its regulatory capital buffer. We find that innovations in a bank's capital in this (precrisis) sample period were coupled with a loan response that lasted up to 3 years. The international presence of UK banks allows us to identify a specific driver of capital shocks in our data, independent of bank lending to UK residents. Specifically, we use write-offs on loans to nonresidents to instrument bank capital's impact on UK resident lending. A fall in capital brought about a significant drop in lending in particular, to Private Nonfinancial Corporations (PNFC). In contrast, household lending increased when capital fell, which may indicate that, in this precrisis period, banks substituted into less risky assets when capital was short.     

Unions,wages and productivity: some evidence from UK engineering firms

Estimates of union wage and productivity effects are derived using primary micro-level panel data for a sample of firms in the UK engineering industry. Union wage differentials of the order of 10% are suggested from the results, whereas union productivity impacts appear to be non-linear with respect to union density.     

Illicit drug use and labour market achievement: evidence from the UK

This study, using data from the British Crime Survey (BCS), examines the effect of drug use on occupational achievement. It starts by attempting to overcome the identification problem that results from the limited set of drug use questions presented in the BCS. Taking this into account, and allowing for the endogeneity of drug use in equations for unemployment and labour market outcomes, that a mild positive association with ‘soft’ drugs and occupational achievement is observed that diminishes with age. This relationship holds for males but not for females. In contrast, it is also found that past use of ‘hard’ drugs significantly increases the likelihood of current unemployment, although it appears to be unrelated to occupational success, conditional on achieving employment.     

The exceptional performance of exporters and labour market outcomes: evidence from Egyptian firms

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the manufacturing export market in Egypt after the Arab Spring using a novel firm-level census dataset from 2013. Export is very rare in Egypt. The conventional export premia are very high, except for total factor productivity. Exporters have stark effects on labour market outcomes, including wages, employment, demand for skilled and female workers, wage inequality, and job security. These findings have two important implications: (1) Manufacturing exports might be monopolized by large firms, and (2) promoting exports could improve labour market outcomes, especially for skilled and female workers.     

Non-linearity in the determinants of capital structure: evidence from UK firms

We demonstrate that, by exploiting more fully the distribution of leverage, conditional quantile regression methods yield new insights into the choice of leverage ratio. For UK listed companies we find that not only is the estimated effect of the explanatory variables different at different quantiles of the distribution, but also that the effect of a variable changes sign between low leveraged and high leveraged firms.      

Innovation in R&D service firms: evidence from the UK

Research and Development (R&D) service firms make significant contributions to innovation in other businesses. The extant literature considers these firms a homogenous sub-group of Knowledge Intensive Business Service firms (KIBS). The objective of this study is to investigate how R&D service firms innovate and the variety of innovation practices within these firms. Employing data from semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 32 UK-based R&D service firms, we suggest that there are two different modes of innovation: in the first mode, R&D service firms innovate similarly to KIBS whose innovation is ad-hoc in nature and driven by customers’ requests; another group of R&D service firms innovate like New Technology-based Firms (NTBFs) relying more on structured in-house R&D activities.     

Productivity, exporting, and the learning-by-exporting hypothesis: direct evidence from UK firms

Abstract.  Case studies suggest exporters learn from clients. Econometric evidence is mixed. We use firm-level panel data on exporting and productivity with direct information on learning sources, including clients. We find: (a) firms who exported in the past are likely to learn more from clients (relative to other sources); (b) firms who learned from clients in the past are more likely to have faster productivity growth; (c) the reverse is not the case; that is, past productivity growth is not associated with more learning from clients and past learning from clients is not associated with more exporting. These results are consistent with the learning-by-exporting hypothesis.     

Urban bias and multinational firms

This paper explores how urban bias in the host country affects the movement of multinational capital owned by multinational firms in the source country and the production in the invested sector. If the degree of urban bias in one of the urban sectors in the host country increases, then the amount of multinational capital flowing into the host country will increase, but the production in the invested sector will have different changes in different situations.     

Ownership advantages,home production,foreign production and exports of direct investing firms—Some evidence from austrian firms

This paper formulates a simple model of a monopolistic, horizontally integrated, multinational firm with multiplant economies of scale generated by inputs with public good characteristics. The econometric analysis of the model conducted with a sample of Austrian firms points to a substitutive relationship of foreign production and home production with foreign production significantly lowering exports. The estimation results, however, indicate in accordance with the economic model that multiplant economies of scales significantly lower the magnitude of substitution. Holding exports constant a complementary relationship between home production and foreign production would appear indicating that substitution would be much higher in the absence of multiplant economies of scale.     

温州民营企业跨国经营调查

笔者于2002年对温州市民营企业的国际化发展问题进行了考察。考察对象是有海外经营业务的生产型企业。企业调查分两种方式进行。一是问卷调查。根据调查目的,我们设计了问卷,每一个问题按照5个等级评分回答(1=最弱;2=较弱;3=一般;4=较强;5二最强),共收回有效问卷112份。     

The structure of multinational activity: evidence from Germany

Recent empirical studies of the determinants of multinational activity across countries have found overwhelming support for a horizontal rather than a vertical model of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The majority of these studies use data either originating in or targeted at the US. This article presents evidence from a dataset of German inward and outward FDI. The dataset is similar in scope to the widely used US Bureau of Economic Analysis data, making the results comparable to those from previous studies. In addition, a new empirical specification is employed that avoids some of the problems that have plagued these studies. The results provide little indication of vertical multinationals. FDI happens largely between similarly endowed countries. Multinational firms originate in skilled-labour abundant countries, although the evidence is mixed on whether they are also small. A novel result is that German firms invest disproportionately in other European countries, while the reverse is not true.     

Lobbying and the power of multinational firms

Can multinational firms exert more power than national firms by influencing politics through lobbying? To answer this question, we analyze the extent of national environmental regulation when policy is determined in a lobbying game between a government and a firm. We compare the resulting equilibrium regulation levels, outputs and welfare in a game with a multinational firm with those in an otherwise identical game with a national firm. For low transportation costs, output and pollution of a national firm are always as least as high as for a multinational; this changes for high transportation costs and intermediate damage parameters. When there is no lobbying, welfare levels are always higher with multinationals than with national firms. However, the existence of lobbying may reverse this ordering.     

Corruption and cross-border investment by multinational firms

Motivated by previous studies on the effect of corruption on foreign direct investment, we examine the impact of a distance measure of corruption between host and source countries on cross-border direct investment and find that corruption distance deters cross-border investment. The evidence indicates that corruption distance is not as serious a deterrent of outward direct investment from more-corrupt countries as it is from less-corrupt countries. We conclude that multinational firms with the capacity to engage in bribery can disregard this activity in transparent environments, whereas multinational firms accustomed to operating in transparent environments find it difficult to overcome the administrative complexities in corrupt environments. Journal of Comparative Economics 34 (4) (2006) 839–856.     

The labour market effects of offshoring of small and medium-sized firms: micro-level evidence for Germany

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the economic powerhouse of many OECD countries (perhaps most prominently so in Germany). Yet, the labour market dynamics caused by the internationalization of their production activities are largely unexplored. We use survey-based micro-level data for Germany to explore the employment effects of offshoring of SMEs, relying on propensity score matching and difference-in-difference analysis. We find evidence for a downsizing effect in the immediate aftermath of offshoring whereas, initially, job creation is not spurred. In the medium run, we find evidence for a slowing down of employment dynamics of offshoring firms (that tend to belong to the better performing SMEs in Germany) relative to non-offshoring firms. Even though our results do not point to a net employment loss in the medium run, our evidence suggests that offshoring may lead to less jobs being created. This conclusion cannot be confirmed for large companies.     

Productivity and metal mining: evidence from copper-mining firms

One of the aims of productivity measurement is to assess the performance of various sectors of the economy with respect to their use of scarce inputs. In this paper the emphasis is on the effects of firm behaviour on simple index number measurement of total factor productivity in non-renewable resource industries. Economic theory predicts that when the stock of ore is known and there is positive discount rate, an intertemporally profit-maximizing firm will often process the ‘best’ ore first. That is, ores that are of high grade and/or are most easily accessible will be correspond to the lowest-cost units of final metal output. Less capital, labour, energy and matgerials will be needed in the mining and milling processes.     

Structural change,specialization and regional labour market performance: evidence for the UK

While structural change and regional differences in the pattern of employment specialization are widely perceived to be significant factors in accounting for disparities in the labour market performance of regions in the United Kingdom, there have been relatively few recent attempts to gather detailed evidence on this issue. The current study aims to fill this gap by examining the effects of structural change and associated changes in the pattern of employment specialization on three key indicators of regional labour market performance: the rate of employment growth, the unemployment rate and the rate of nonemployment. The findings indicate that while industry structure has statistically significant effects on regional labour market performance, the quantitative significance of these effects is relatively small.     

Outsourcing versus integration at home or abroad and firm heterogeneity

This paper analyzes the location (at home or abroad) and the mode of organization (outsourcing versus integration) of intermediate inputs production, using data on a sample of Italian manufacturing companies and focusing on the role of firm heterogeneity. We find evidence of a productivity ordering where foreign integration is chosen by the most productive firms and domestic outsourcing is chosen by the least productive firms; firms with medium-high productivity choose domestic integration, firms with medium-low productivity choose foreign outsourcing.     

中小企业融资问题国内外对比研究

中小企业已经成为国民经济发展的支柱力量，其经济地位是举足轻重的。但是融资难却是中小企业发展过程中面临的最大的困难，已成为制约中小企业发展的瓶颈、在解决中小企业融资难问题时我们可借鉴美、日等国扶持中小企业融资的一些成功做法，这些经验为解决我国中小企业融资难的问题提供了思路，同时结合我国的国情，制定一套适合解决我国中小企业融资难的法律法规、服务体系及信用担保机制。     

Innovation and productivity in family firms: evidence from a sample of European firms

ABSTRACT

Using firm-level data, we estimate the returns to R&D investments for a sample of European manufacturing firms over the period 2007–2009. Results confirm that R&D efforts are positively related to productivity regardless of firm type (family or nonfamily firms). Additionally, we find that family firms invested more in R&D than nonfamily firms, but the returns to their R&D investments are low, emphasizing that they have a lower capacity to translate R&D investments into economic gains.