Financial constraints have been found to play an important role on various aspects of firm behavior. Yet, their effects on firm survival have been largely neglected. We use a panel of 9420 newly established UK firms over the period 1997-2002 to study the effects of financial variables on firms’ failure probabilities, differentiating firms into globally engaged and purely domestic. Estimating a ...

We investigate the effects of human capital accumulation on trade and productivity by integrating a micro-founded education and fertility decision of households into a model of international trade with firm heterogeneity. Our theoretical framework leads to two testable implications: i) the export share of a country increases with the education level of its population, ii) the average profitabil...

This paper analyses the determinants of outward processing (OP) trade; specifically, imports of intermediates subsequent to processing abroad. A model where firms choose between OP and importing intermediates directly from a third country (generic offshoring, GO) predicts higher tariffs, lower monitoring costs and higher quality make OP more likely, while better institutions and rule of law abr...

This paper investigates the impact of acquisition FDI on exporting intensity in U.K manufacturing. A quasi-likelihood estimation method is used, and the empirical estimates point to the following conclusions: (i) UK firms with higher exporting intensity are more likely to be foreign takeover targets; (ii) US acquired firms increase their exporting intensity, consistent with the idea that acquis...

Financial constraints have been found to play an important role on various aspects of firm behavior. Yet, their effects on firm survival have been largely neglected. We use a panel of 61496 UK firms over the period 19972002 to study the effects of financial variables on firms’ failure probabilities, differentiating firms into globally engaged and purely domestic. Estimating a wide range of spec...

This paper infers the terms of trade effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) implemented in the 1990s. We estimate large FTA effects on bilateral trade volume in 2 digit manufacturing goods from 1990-2002, using panel data gravity methods to resolve two way causality. The terms of trade changes implied by these volume effects are deduced for 40 countries plus a rest-of-the-world aggregate using...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights, market integration will systematically shift technical change in favor of rich nations. For this reason, free trade can increase international income differences. At the same time, integration with countries where intellectual property rights are weakly protected can have a large adverse effect on the worl...

In this paper we consider three questions. Why do only some firms enter export markets? What are the benefits to the firm from export market entry? Why do some of these firms exit the market at a future date? Using data on UK manufacturing firms from 1988 to 2002 we find evidence that information spillovers between firms can raise the probability of entry and for a matched sample of firms there...

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between export barriers and the export performance of Greek firms targeting the Iranian market. Reviewing the literature and using expert opinions, 18 variables were identified. A structured questionnaire was applied to 141 Greek firms and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to categorize variables in 6 dimensions. Then...