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on Technology and Industrial Dynamics |
| By: | Cassiman, Bruno; Golovko, Elena |
| Abstract: | We explore the relationship between innovation activity, productivity, and exports using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms for 1990-1998. Our results - based on non-parametric tests - suggest that firm innovation status is important in explaining the positive export-productivity association documented in prior research. For the sample of small innovating firms, we find no significant differences in productivity levels between exporters and non-exporters. Especially product innovation seems to explain the positive association between exports and productivity for this group of firms. For small non-innovating firms with low and medium productivity levels exporting firms continue to exhibit higher productivity than non-exporting firms. |
| Keywords: | exports; innovation; process innovation; product innovation; productivity |
| JEL: | D21 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6411&r=tid |
| By: | Degryse, Hans; Laeven, Luc; Ongena, Steven |
| Abstract: | Recent theoretical models argue that a bank’s organizational structure reflects its lending technology. A hierarchically organized bank will employ mainly hard information, whereas a decentralized bank will rely more on soft information. We investigate theoretically and empirically how bank organization shapes banking competition. Our theoretical model illustrates how a lending bank’s geographical reach and loan pricing strategy is determined not only by its own organizational structure but also by organizational choices made by its rivals. We take our model to the data by estimating the impact of the lending and rival banks’ organization on the geographical reach and loan pricing of a singular, large bank in Belgium. We employ detailed contract information from more than 15,000 bank loans granted to small firms, comprising the entire loan portfolio of this large bank, and information on the organizational structure of all rival banks located in the vicinity of the borrower. We find that the organizational structures of both the rival banks and the lending bank matter for branch reach and loan pricing. The geographical footprint of the lending bank is smaller when rival banks are large and hierarchically organized. Such rival banks may rely more on hard information. Geographical reach increases when rival banks have inferior communication technology, have a wider span of organization, and are further removed from a decision unit with lending authority. Rival banks’ size and the number of layers to a decision unit also soften spatial pricing. We conclude that the organizational structure and technology of rival banks in the vicinity influence local banking competition. |
| Keywords: | authority; banking sector; competition; hierarchies; technology |
| JEL: | G21 L11 L14 |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6412&r=tid |
| By: | Desmet, Klaus; Rossi-Hansberg, Esteban |
| Abstract: | U.S. county data for the last 20 or 30 years show that manufacturing employment has been deconcentrating. In contrast, the service sector exhibits concentration in counties with intermediate levels of employment. This paper presents a theory where local sectoral growth is driven by technological diffusion across space. The age of an industry -- measured as the time elapsed since the last major general purpose technology innovation in the sector -- determines the pattern of scale dependence in growth rates. Young industries exhibit non-monotone relationships between employment levels and growth rates, while old industries experience negative scale dependence in growth rates. The model then predicts that the relationship between county employment growth rates and county employment levels in manufacturing at the turn of the 20th century should be similar to the same relationship in services in the last 20 years. We provide evidence consistent with this prediction. |
| Keywords: | industry age; scale dependence; spatial growth; US counties |
| JEL: | R1 |
| Date: | 2007–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6421&r=tid |