This paper examines the relationship between the firm's direct ties, its inter‐firm network prominence and its likelihood of being acquired. The authors argue that firm's direct ties and prominence ...enhance the firm's visibility and signal its quality – and thus foster the firm's likelihood of being acquired. However, higher levels of direct ties and prominence, by providing access to resources and the firm's status, respectively, increase the firm's ability to remain independent and thus reduce its likelihood of being acquired. Thus, the authors posit the overall relation as an inverted U‐shaped. Furthermore, they show that, for firms that undergo an initial public offering, the aforementioned relation becomes much weaker. The hypotheses are empirically tested in the biopharmaceutical industry and important theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
Abstract
We build a dynamic heterogeneous-firm model in which real depreciations raise export demand and the cost of importing intermediates, and also affect borrowing constraints and the ...profitability of engaging in research and development (R&D). A number of stylized facts on manufacturing firms for a large set of countries discipline our estimation: Firms in emerging East Asia are very export oriented and rely little on imported intermediates, whereas the opposite holds for Latin America and Eastern Europe; firms from industrialized countries export as much as they import. Exporters experience an increase in cash flow, R&D, and productivity growth in response to real exchange rate (RER) depreciations; importers experience the opposite outcomes. In counterfactual simulations of temporary RER movements, the effects on innovation and productivity growth are heterogeneous across regions, sizeable and persistent. In emerging Asia, real depreciations are associated with higher probabilities to engage in R&D, faster growth of average firm-level productivity and cash flow, and higher export entry rates; we find negative average effects on these outcomes for firms in other emerging economies, and no significant average effects for firms in industrialized economies.
We estimate the productivity effects of labor specialization using a judicial environment that offers a quasi-experimental setting well suited to this purpose. Judges in this environment are randomly ...assigned many different types of cases. This assignment generates random streaks of same-type cases, which creates minispecialization events unrelated to the characteristics of judges or cases. We estimate that when judges receive more cases of a certain type, they become faster, that is, more likely to close cases of that type in any one of the corresponding hearings. Quality, as measured by probability of an appeal, is not negatively affected.
ABSTRACT
This paper examines the effects of state merit‐based student aid programs on college attendance and degree completion. Our primary analysis uses microdata from the 2000 United States Census ...and 2001–2010 American Community Survey to estimate the effects of exposure to merit programs on educational outcomes for 25 states that adopted such programs by 2004. We also utilize administrative data for the University System of Georgia to look more in depth at the effects of exposure to the HOPE Scholarship on degree completion. We find strong consistent evidence that exposure to state merit aid programs have no meaningfully positive effect on college completion.
Public health spending is low in emerging and developing economies relative to advanced economies and health outputs and outcomes need to be substantially improved. Simply increasing public ...expenditure in the health sector, however, may not significantly affect health outcomes if the efficiency of this spending is low. This paper quantifies the inefficiency of public health expenditure and the associated potential gains for emerging and developing economies using a stochastic frontier model that controls for the socioeconomic determinants of health, and provides country‐specific estimates. The results suggest that African economies have the lowest efficiency. At 2009 spending levels, they could boost life expectancy up to about 5 years if they followed best practices.
Abstract
Using data on mayoral elections in large Italian cities during the 2000s, we investigate whether and how voter turnout affects city performance across a number of dimensions. To address the ...issue of voter turnout endogeneity and identify the transmission mechanism, we exploit exogenous variation in participation rates in mayoral elections due to anticipated shocks (concurrence of local and national elections) and unanticipated shocks (bad weather on the day of the election) to the cost of voting. The results consistently point to a negative impact of voter turnout rates on indicators of urban environmental performance, life quality, and administrative efficiency. Interestingly, though, we find that only anticipated shocks to turnout affect the quality of elected mayors measured on a number of competence dimensions, compatibly with the hypothesis of a selection mechanism whereby parties choose candidates to maximize their chances of winning the elections based on their expectations on voter turnout rates (JEL D72, H72, C26).
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries is often associated with higher economic growth due to knowledge and technology spillovers to local firms. One way that FDI speeds up growth is ...by facilitating the manufacturing of more sophisticated products by local firms. So far, there is a lack of firm-level evidence how the presence of multinational firms affects the product sophistication of firms in a developing country. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We compile an extensive firm–product-level data set of Indian manufacturing firms, which we complement with information on product sophistication and spillovers from FDI. We then explore different channels through which spillovers from multinationals to local Indian firms foster the manufacturing of sophisticated products. We find evidence that spillovers through supplier linkages strongly increase the manufacturing of sophisticated products in India. L'investissement direct de l'étranger (IDE) vers les pays en voie de développement est souvent associé à une plus forte croissance économique à cause de transfert de connaissances et des effets de retombée de la technologie sur les firmes locales. Une manière pour l'IDE d'accélérer la croissance est de faciliter la manufacture de biens plus sophistiqués par les firmes locales. Pour le moment, il y a manque de données probantes au niveau des firmes montrant comment la présence de firmes plurinationales affecte la sophistication des produits des firmes domestiques dans les pays en développement. Ce mémoire veut combler ce vide. On compile des données extensives pour les produits des firmes manufacturières indiennes qu'on complète avec des données sur la sophistication des produits et les effets de retombée des IDE. On explore alors les différents canaux à travers lesquels des effets de débordements des plurinationales se déversent sur les firmes indiennes et suscitent la production de biens sophistiqués. Les résultats montrent que les retombées via des liens avec les fournisseurs accroissent fortement le degré de sophistication des produits en Inde.
We study how institutions influence start-up characteristics of firms and how these characteristics predict entrants' growth trajectories over the early firm life cycle. Using census data from India, ...we find that greater financial development is associated with higher entry rates and smaller-sized entrants. Following entry, however, large and small entrants grow at the same rates across states with different institutions or industries with differing reliance on external finance. The impact of access to finance is greater on start-up size and entry rates than on the subsequent growth of firms during the early life cycle.
Originado en los nexos y relaciones entabladas entre las ciudades, y entre éstas y el campo, el sistema urbano aparece como un componente-clave del territorio, articulado en función de las ...necesidades modernas de producción y del intercambio geográficamente próximo. Si bien la urbanización conoció su fase de esplendor durante el auge del medio técnico y el centro de gravedad de la metamorfosis del espacio recientemente se ha desplazado hacia las áreas rurales -que son renovadas por la ciencia y la información con más rapidez y plasticidad (con menos rigidez y resistencia) que las ciudades-, entender la economía de un país aún requiere aprehender el fenómeno urbano como un sistema. Es en las cidades donde las funciones de comando del territorio se concentran y superponen, donde la producción industrial, los servicios especializados y las finanzas prosperan, y desde donde operan los vectores articuladores de las economías regionales; así, las ciudades son puntos de intersección y superposición de verticalidades y horizontalidades, o sea, puentes entre lo global y lo local. En este trabajo, se aborda el estudio de la red urbana argentina durante el período 2001-2010, a nivel nacional y provincial, analizando los fenómenos de metropolización (metrópolis nacionales, secundarias y regionales) y de desmetropolización (urbanización concentrada -ciudades medias- y aglomerada), para explicar las continuidades, rupturas, tendencias y cambios verificados en la evolución de los sistemas de ciudades.
Does the involvement of foreign third parties in the management of a country in the wake of a civil war have positive or negative economic effects? The approaches used to address this question in the ...social and political science literature are mostly qualitative and not sufficiently supported by quantitative evidence. This paper uses a quantitative analysis of the postconflict economic performance of Kosovo and East Timor under international administrations sponsored by the United Nations in the late 1990s. By using the synthetic control impact evaluation technique, we compute suitable counterfactual scenarios for each country to estimate the intervention effects of interest. We find a robust negative effect from the intervention on Kosovo, whereas the effect on East Timor is positive.
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