No disponible en español
Ana Cristina Soares
- 4 May 2015
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1788Details
- Abstract
- This paper provides a new cross-country evaluation of competitiveness, focusing on the linkages between productivity and export performance among European economies. We use the information compiled in the Trade module of CompNet to establish new stylized facts regarding the joint distributions of the firm-level exports performance and productivity in a panel of 15 countries, 23 manufacturing sectors during the 2000
- JEL Code
- F10 : International Economics→Trade→General
F14 : International Economics→Trade→Empirical Studies of Trade - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network
- 17 December 2014
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1751Details
- Abstract
- This article estimates price-cost margins for the Portuguese markets in a context of imperfect competition in the labour market. The database used includes virtually the universe of Portuguese firms for the period 2005-2009. The results strongly reject the hypothesis of perfect competition in both labour and product markets. Estimated price-cost margins are very heterogeneous across markets and the average for the overall economy ranges between 25 and 28 per cent, depending on the variables used to weight each market. In addition, the tradable sector presents a lower price-cost margin than the non-tradable sector. According to the methodology used, workers
- JEL Code
- L10 : Industrial Organization→Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance→General
L60 : Industrial Organization→Industry Studies: Manufacturing→General
O50 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→General - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network
- 18 February 2014
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1634Details
- Abstract
- Drawing from confidential firm-level balance sheets in 11 European countries, the paper presents a novel sectoral database of comparable productivity indicators built by members of the Competitiveness Research Network (CompNet) using a newly developed research infrastructure. Beyond aggregate information available from industry statistics of Eurostat or EU KLEMS, the paper provides information on the distribution of firms across several dimensions related to competitiveness, e.g. productivity and size. The database comprises so far 11 countries, with information for 58 sectors over the period 1995-2011. The paper documents the development of the new research infrastructure, describes the database, and shows some preliminary results. Among them, it shows that there is large heterogeneity in terms of firm productivity or size within narrowly defined industries in all countries. Productivity, and above all, size distribution are very skewed across countries, with a thick left-tail of low productive firms. Moreover, firms at both ends of the distribution show very different dynamics in terms of productivity and unit labour costs. Within-sector heterogeneity and productivity dispersion are positively correlated to aggregate productivity given the possibility of reallocating resources from less to more productive firms. To this extent, we show how allocative efficiency varies across countries, and more interestingly, over different periods of time. Finally, we apply the new database to illustrate the importance of productivity dispersion to explain aggregate trade results.
- JEL Code
- L11 : Industrial Organization→Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance→Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms
L25 : Industrial Organization→Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior→Firm Performance: Size, Diversification, and Scope
D24 : Microeconomics→Production and Organizations→Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity
O4 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
O57 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→Comparative Studies of Countries - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network
- 5 November 2013
- WORKING PAPER SERIES - No. 1603Details
- Abstract
- This article segments the Portuguese economy into fairly disaggregated markets and estimates a new competition measure suggested by Boone (2008), which draws on the concept of profit elasticity to marginal costs. In addition, robustness of results across econometric specifications is discussed, along with their consistency with classical competition indicators. The article concludes that the majority of Portuguese markets exhibited a reduction in competition in the period 2000-2009, though there is substantial heterogeneity. In addition, markets that faced competition reductions represent the large majority of sales, gross value added and employment in the Portuguese economy. The non-tradable sector shows lower competition intensity than the tradable sector. Moreover, reductions in competition are relatively widespread across markets in both sectors, but in terms of sales, gross value added and employment these reductions are more substantial in the non-tradable sector. In the majority of markets the assessment on the evolution of competition using profit elasticities is similar to that obtained with classical competition indicators.
- JEL Code
- L10 : Industrial Organization→Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance→General
L60 : Industrial Organization→Industry Studies: Manufacturing→General
O50 : Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth→Economywide Country Studies→General - Network
- Competitiveness Research Network