nep-bec New Economics Papers
on Business Economics
Issue of 2014‒10‒22
twelve papers chosen by
Vasileios Bougioukos
Bangor University

  1. Firm age and the margins of international trade: Comparable evidence from five European countries By Joachim Wagner
  2. Transnational ties and performance of immigrant entrepreneurs: the case of IT industry in Italy By Jan Brzozowski; Marco Cucculelli; Aleksander Surdej
  3. Competition, Product Proliferation and Welfare: A Study of the U.S. Smartphone Market By Ying Fan; Chenyu Yang
  4. Price-setting behaviour in New Zealand By Miles Parker
  5. The Exporting and Productivity Nexus: Does Firm Size Matter? By Cassey LEE
  6. E-Skills, Brains and Performance of the Firms: ICT and Ability of Firms to Conduct Successful Projects in Luxembourg By Anissa Chaibi; Adel Ben Youssef; Leila Peltier- Ben Aoun
  7. The Merger-Paradox: A Tournament-Based Solution By Fan, Cuihong; Wolfstetter, Elmar G.
  8. Firms, Productivity and Trade By Gopinath, Munisamy; Choi, Jangho
  9. Estimating Direct and Indirect Effects of Foreign Direct Investment on firm Productivity in the Presence of Interactions between Firms By Sourafel Girma; Yundan Gong; Holger Görg; Sandra Lancheros
  10. Firms, Quality Upgrading and Trade By Sheldon, Ian
  11. Multinational Retailers and Firm-Level Exports By Cheptea, Angela; Emlinger, Charlotte; Latouche, Karine
  12. The effects of energy costs on firm re-location decisions By Lucia Lavric; Nick Hanley

  1. By: Joachim Wagner (Leuphana University Lueneburg, Germany)
    Abstract: This note uses comparable representative data for manufacturing firms from five European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) to investigate the links between firm age and the participation of the firms in export, the share of exports in total sales, the number of countries exported to, and the participation in import. The big picture revealed is in line with the theoretical considerations. Older firms tend to be more often exporters and importers, they export to more different destination countries, and they export a higher share of their total sales in three out of five countries.
    Keywords: Exports, imports, firm age, ´trade margins, EFIGE data
    JEL: F14
    Date: 2014–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lue:wpaper:308&r=bec
  2. By: Jan Brzozowski (Cracow University of Economics, Department of European Studies); Marco Cucculelli (Universit… Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Scienze economiche e sociali); Aleksander Surdej (Cracow University of Economics, Department of European Studies)
    Abstract: This study contributes to the recent empirical literature on the performance of transnational immigrants' firms by investigating the effect of transnational ties on the firm's growth. In addition to the effect of the ties, the paper shows that home-country's institutional and socio-economic characteristics and country-specific entrepreneurial factors have a crucial role in shaping the ties-performance relationship. The evidence from a sample of immigrantowned firms in the Italian ICT sector in the period 2000-2010 confirmed the relevance of the proposed model and helped in understanding a potential channel of improvements in immigrant firms' performance through transnational ties. Our results show the limited relevance of a direct, or linear, impact of ties on the growth of sales in immigrant-run firms in the ICT sector, whereas supports the crucial moderating role of home country characteristics on the ties-performance relationship.
    Keywords: ICT industry, Italy, ethnic business ties, immigrants' firms' performance, transnational entrepreneurship
    Date: 2014–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anc:wmofir:98&r=bec
  3. By: Ying Fan (Department of Economics, University of Michigan, 611 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109); Chenyu Yang (Department of Economics, University of Michigan, 611 Tappan Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109)
    Abstract: We consider a structural model of demand and supply where firms endogenously offer vertically differentiated products and exercise second-degree price discrimination. We apply this model to the smartphone industry and quantify the welfare effects of price discrimination and competition. We use counterfactual simulations to assess how the welfare changes when each firm only offers its highest-quality product. We also study the market outcomes such as price, product variety and welfare if later entrants in the market entered earlier.
    Keywords: endogenous product choice, second-degree price discrimination, smartphone industry
    JEL: L11 L15 L13 L63
    Date: 2014–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1414&r=bec
  4. By: Miles Parker (Reserve Bank of New Zealand)
    Abstract: New evidence from a large survey of over 5300 firms provides insight into price-setting behaviour in New Zealand. There is considerable heterogeneity in behaviour both between and within sectors, and marked asymmetry in the responses to shocks. The median number of prices reviews is twice per year, but the median number of changes is just once. Multi-product firms reset prices more frequently, even accounting for other firm characteristics. Explicit and implicit contracts and strategic complementarity are the most widely recognised causes of price stickness. Menu costs and sticky information are not widely recognised.
    JEL: E30 D40
    Date: 2014–07
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nzb:nzbdps:2014/04&r=bec
  5. By: Cassey LEE (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies)
    Abstract: The main purpose of this study is to examine whether the relationship between exporting and productivity differs across firm sizes in the Malaysian manufacturing sector. A firm-level panel data from the Study on Knowledge Content in Economic Sectors in Malaysia (MyKE) is used in the study. Overall, exporters were found to be more productive than non-exporters. This productivity gap becomes less important as firms become larger. There is evidence that the selection process for exporting is binding only for small firms. Policies that are meant to encourage small firms to export need to focus on enhancing human capital and foreign ownership.
    Keywords: Globalisation, Firm Size, Exporting, Productivity
    JEL: L60 O30 F14
    Date: 2014
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:dp-2014-14&r=bec
  6. By: Anissa Chaibi; Adel Ben Youssef; Leila Peltier- Ben Aoun
    Abstract: This paper provides original empirical evidence on the causal links between e-skills, usage of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and firm’s performance using a sample of Luxembourgian manufacturing and services firms. Firm performance is measured in terms of innovation (success of new projects settled). Our main findings are: (i) there’s no relationship between the absorptive technology capacity of the firm (measured by ICT staff and Training) and the probability of the implementation of successful ICT projects, (ii) there is a positive effect of e-applications usage (ICT usage) on the probability of the implementation of successful new projects, and (iii) there is an asymmetric effect of usage of e-commerce and eadministration confirming findings of the recent literature.
    Keywords: Innovation; Usage of ICT; Depth of ICT adoption; Ordered models; Innovative projects.
    JEL: L21 O31 O33
    Date: 2014–09–25
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipg:wpaper:2014-587&r=bec
  7. By: Fan, Cuihong; Wolfstetter, Elmar G.
    Abstract: According to the well-known “merger paradoxâ€, in a Cournot market game mergers are generally unprofitable unless most firms merge. The present paper proposes an optimal merger mechanism. With this mechanism mergers are never unprofitable, more profitable than in other known mechanism, and in many cases welfare increasing. The proposed mechanism assumes that merged firms continue to operate as independent subsidiaries that are rewarded according to a simple and commonly observed relative performance measure.
    Keywords: Mergers; multi-divisional firms; tournaments; industrial organization.
    JEL: L00 D4
    Date: 2014–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:trf:wpaper:478&r=bec
  8. By: Gopinath, Munisamy; Choi, Jangho
    Keywords: International Relations/Trade, Productivity Analysis,
    Date: 2013–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iats13:182474&r=bec
  9. By: Sourafel Girma; Yundan Gong; Holger Görg; Sandra Lancheros
    Abstract: We implement a method to estimate the direct effects of foreign-ownership on foreign firms' productivity and the indirect effects (or spillovers) from the presence of foreign-owned firms on other foreign and domestic firms' productivity in a unifying framework, taking interactions between firms into account. To do so, we relax a fundamental assumption made in empirical studies examining a direct causal effect of foreign ownership on firm productivity, namely that of no interactions between firms. Based on our approach, we are able to combine direct and indirect effects of foreign ownership and calculate the total effect of foreign firms on local productivity. Our results show that all these effects vary with the level of foreign presence within a cluster, an important finding for the academic literature and policy debate on the benefits of attracting foreign owned firms
    Keywords: foreign direct investment, treatment effects, SUTVA, propensity score matching
    JEL: F23 C19
    Date: 2014–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:kie:kieliw:1961&r=bec
  10. By: Sheldon, Ian
    Keywords: Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade,
    Date: 2013–12
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iats13:182476&r=bec
  11. By: Cheptea, Angela; Emlinger, Charlotte; Latouche, Karine
    Keywords: Production Economics, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,
    Date: 2013
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:iats13:182499&r=bec
  12. By: Lucia Lavric (Department of Economics, Duke University); Nick Hanley (School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St. Andrews)
    Abstract: Energy costs are partly driven by environmental policy choices. In this paper, the effects of variations in energy costs – as measured by end-user electricity prices – on firm relocation decisions are investigated. Using a discrete choice model a nd a data base which has not previously been exploited to study this problem, we investigate the effects of variations in energy costs both for a sub-set of re-locating European firms in terms of which country they move to; and then for a larger set of firms in terms of the decision to re-locate or not in response to higher energy prices. We find that energy costs play a significant role in determining relocation destinations, and that this effect is asymmetric between firms moving into and out of a country , and between high energy intensity and low energy intensity sectors. The findings of the paper have implications for the Pollution Havens Hypothesis, since they show the extent to which the effects of climate policy on domestic energy costs can be expected to impact on firm relocation decisions both into and out of a country.
    Keywords: firm re-location, energy costs, Pollution Havens Hypothesis, climate policy, carbonleakage
    JEL: D22 F18 Q41 Q52
    Date: 2014–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sss:wpaper:201402&r=bec

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