This paper quantifies employer market power in US manufacturing and how it has changed over time. Using administrative data, we estimate plant-level markdowns—the ratio between a plant’s marginal revenue product of labor its wage. We find most plants operate monopsonistic environment, with an average markdown 1.53, implying worker earning only 65 cents on the dollar generated. To investigate lo...

Using quantile regression and a rich cross section data set for German manufacturing plants this paper documents that the impact of plant characteristics on export activities varies along the conditional size distribution of the export/sales ratio. For example, firm size is statistically significant at a conventional level for the 0.25 quantile only; branch plant status matters at the upper tai...

This paper is an empirical investigation of the evolutionary principle of ‘growth of the fitter’. Previous studies suggest that growth does not discriminate between firms according to their fitness, when this latter is proxied by productivity. We use the profit rate (operating surplus/value added) as a proxy for fitness and explore its influence on subsequent growth rates by tracking 8405 Frenc...

This paper investigates how the environmental pollution in East Asian countries can be affected by trade of ‘dirty’ goods with Japan and the USA. By controlling for trade openness, the share of manufacturing in GDP, and the trade of pollution-intensive products with Japan and the USA, CO2 emissions are estimated for ten East Asian countries between 1988 and 2000. Our results show that increasin...

Using panel data from Spain Farinas and Ruano (IJIO 2005) test three hypotheses from a model by Hopenhayn (Econometrica 1992): (H1) Firms that exit in year t were in t-1 less productive than firms that continue to produce in t. (H2) Firms that enter in year t are less productive than incumbent firms in year t. (H3) Surviving firms from an entry cohort were more productive than non-surviving fir...

This paper investigates the determinants of vertical integration and confronts some of the predictions of the leading approach to the internal organization of the firm with data from the UK manufacturing sector. Consistent with the theory, it shows that an upsteam and downstream activity pair are more likely to be vertically integrated, when the downstream (the producer) is more technology inte...

The paper investigates structural change among the four-digit (SIC) industries of the U.S. manufacturing sector during 1958-96 within a distribution dynamics framework. Focus is on the transition density of the Markov process that characterizes the value added shares of the industries. This transition density is estimated nonparametrically as well as by maximum likelihood, in which case the fun...

There is extensive empirical evidence pointing to the existence of sunk costs to exporting. Only higher productivity firms can profitably cover these and enter export markets. This is the standard explanation for the regularity with which econometric analyses reports that exporters are more productive than non-exporters. But what happens to their productivity trajectory once they have entered? ...

Entry, Exit and Productivity: Empirical Results for German Manufacturing Industries Using panel data from Spain Farinas and Ruano (IJIO 2005) test three hypotheses from a model by Hopenhayn (Econometrica 1992): (H1) Firms that exit in year t were in t-1 less productive than firms that continue to produce in t. (H2) Firms that enter in year t are less productive than incumbent firms in year t. (...

In recent years, developing countries like Nigeria with large human and natural resources have attracted huge investment leading to a rise in foreign into the Nigerian economy. To create conditions that would attract more Foreign Direct Investment manufacturing subsector, right infrastructure must be put place. This study examined relationship between Investment, output Nigeria. Time series dat...