Higher productivity in importing German manufacturing firms: self-selection, learning from importing, or both?

This paper uses a newly available comprehensive panel data set for manufacturing enterprises from 2001 to 2005 to document the first empirical results on the relationship between imports and productivity for Germany, a leading actor on the world market for goods. Furthermore, for the first time the direction of causality in this relationship is investigated systematically by testing for self-selection of more productive firms into importing, and for productivity-enhancing effects of imports ('learning-by-importing'). We find a positive link between importing and productivity. From an empirical model with fixed enterprise effects that controls for firm size, industry, and unobservable firm heterogeneity we see that the premia for trading internationally are about the same in West and East Germany. Compared to firms that do not trade at all two-way traders do have the highest premia, followed by firms that only export, while firms that only import have the smallest estimated premia. We find evidence for a positive impact of productivity on importing, pointing to self-selection of more productive enterprises into imports, but no clear evidence for the effect of importing on productivity due to learning-by-importing

Anthocyanin management in fruits by fertilization

Anthocyanins are water-soluble vacuolar plant pigments that are mainly synthesized in epidermal layers and the flesh of fruits such as apples, cherries, grapes, and other berries. Because of their attractive red to purple coloration and their health-promoting potential, anthocyanins are significant determinants for the quality and market value of fruits and fruit-derived products. In crops, anthocyanin accumulation in leaves can be caused by nutrient deficiency which is usually ascribed to insufficient nitrogen or phosphorus fertilization. However, it is a little-known fact that the plant’s nutrient status also impacts anthocyanin synthesis in fruits. Hence, strategic nutrient supply can be a powerful tool to modify the anthocyanin content and consequently the quality and market value of important agricultural commodities. Here we summarize the current knowledge of the influence of plant nutrients on anthocyanin synthesis in fruits of major global market value and discuss the underlying cellular processes that integrate nutrient signaling with fruit anthocyanin formation. It is highlighted that fertilization that is finely tuned in amount and timing has the potential to positively influence the fruit quality by regulating anthocyanin levels. We outline new approaches to enrich plant based foods with health-promoting anthocyanins

Creative destruction over the business cycle: a stochastic frontier analysis

[[abstract]]This paper examines the within-industry distributions of jobs created and destructed across plants in terms of technical efficiency, technical efficiency change, scale effect, and technical change. It further investigates how these distributions vary with economic activity. By applying the stochastic frontier analysis to plant-level longitudinal data on Taiwan’s 23 two-digit manufacturing industries spanning the period 1992–2003, we find that jobs created (destructed) are disproportionately clustered at plants with lower technical efficiency but higher rate of technical change. A fall in economic activities is associated with a statistically significant decrease (increase) in the fraction of newly created (destructed) jobs accounted for by plants with a higher rate of technical change, indicating that creative destruction is more pronounced during economic contractions.[[journaltype]]國外[[incitationindex]]SSCI[[ispeerreviewed]]Y[[countrycodes]]US