Working Long Hours: Less Productive But Less Costly? Firm-Level Evidence From Belgium

Productive disasters? – Evidence from European firm level data

This paper examines the impact of floods on firms’ capital accumulation, employment growth and productivity by using a difference-indifference approach and considering firms’ asset structure. We find evidence that after a flooding companies in flooded regions show on average higher growth of total assets and employment than firms in areas not affected by flooding. The positive effect prevails f...

Less costly drugs work for nausea, vomiting.

iting (PONV) at an annual cost of several hundred million dollars, preventing this common complication is a priority. A new study by Christian Apfel, MD, and his colleagues provides the first comprehensive head-to-head comparison of common treatments for preventing PONV. Their findings, published in the June 10 New England Journal of Medicine, show that drugs costing a dollar or two per dose, s...

The Taxation of Multinationals: Firm Level Evidence for Belgium

This paper provides empirical evidence of a more favorable tax treatment for foreign multinationals compared to similar domestic firms in a small open economy. Using treatment effects to control for self-selection of foreign firms into low tax firms, we find that foreign multinationals have substantially lower effective tax rates compared to domestic firms. In our estimations we also control fo...

The European Working Time Directive: less means less.

Are Small Firms Really Less Productive? An Analysis of Productivity Differentials and Firm Dynamics

Small and medium-sized establishments (SMEs) account a large proportion of industrial employment and production in almost all countries. Moreover, the recent literature emphasizes the role SMEs play in nurturing entrepreneurship and generating new products and processes. Although SMEs could be a source of new ideas and innovations, there are substantial productivity differences between small an...