In this paper, we take a cost function approach to the investigation of the e¤ects of public infrastructure on the performance of the U.S. manufacturing industry, using KLEMS data over the period from 1953 to 2001. We build on Duggal et al. (1999) and Feng and Serletis (2008) and propose a price augmenting Asymptotically Ideal Model (AIM) model where public infrastructure is incorporated into t...

Efforts to raise US health-care productivity have proceeded slowly, potentially due the fragmentation of payment across insurers. Each insurer’s efforts improve care could influence how doctors practice for other insurers, leading unvalued externalities. We study a randomized letter intervention by Medicare curtail overuse antipsychotics. The letters did not mention private insurance but reduce...

In the past decade, corporate firms have globally increasingly adopted social responsibility (CSR) practices; however, so far less is known about how productivity change in presence of socially responsible and undesirable output can be evaluated. This paper develops a framework that integrates CSR dynamic by-production technology which captures transformation multiple inputs into marketed outpu...

International Trade and its Effects on Economic Growth in China International trade, as a major factor of openness, has made an increasingly significant contribution to economic growth. Chinese international trade has experienced rapid expansion together with its dramatic economic growth which has made the country to target the world as its market. This research discusses the role of internatio...

This paper offers new insights on a central question in trade and development economics: does increased exposure to foreign competition generate gains in plant productivity? We find that it does. We examine Colombian trade policy from 1977 to 1991, a period during which trade liberalization alternates with increased trade protection in varied ways across industries, to investigate the link betw...

This paper provides a different perspective on the firm-level empirical analysis of the relation between foreign ownership and capital demand adjustment in host countries. The author estimates a dynamic structural model of investment on a sample of 4672 Belgian firms observed between 2003 and 2010 that permits to distinguish the ‘ownership status’ of firms. He considers a dynamic discrete choic...

Different from traditional efficiency research and previous studies considering undesirable outputs, this paper proposes models which distinguish weak and strong disposability features among various undesirable outputs based on the technical nature of the undesirable outputs. The paper illustrates the approach using a research sample covering 582 base-load Chinese coal-fired power plants in 200...

Several studies among recent empirical work have suggested that the systematic behavior of lending standards over the business cycles, with laxer standards applied during expansions and tighter standards applied during recessions, may be responsible for driving economic fluctuations. We build a dynamic screening model with informational asymmetry in credit markets that rationalizes these findin...