IT adoption and spatial agglomeration - a model of cumulative adoption in a small open economy

I develop a model of cumulative ICT investments in a small open economy framework with differenciated inputs and imperfect competition borrowed to Ciccone and Matsuyama (1996). Within this framework, fixed adoption costs and pecuniary externalities based on strategic complementarities between users and producers of ICT-related inputs are what allow for agglomeration economies in ICT investments despite the abscence of transport costs. Moreover, expectations and the way alternative industrial structures allow them to be coordinated (monopolistic competition versus horizontally integrated monopoly) are key determinants of the likelyhood of an economic catching-up based on the intensive adoption of ICT inputs. Actually, three alternative growth paths with very different long-run outcome are allowed to emerge : 1) a “no-growth path” path in which the economy is trapped into primitive production processes; 2) a “transitory high growth path” in which the region underwents a process of adjustment to technological change and modernize its production processes by intensively adopting imported ICT-related inputs; 3) a “miracle growth path” where the regional economy find the adequate incentives not only to intensively adopt imported ICT inputs but also to develop and produce new ICT inputs.

Financial Constraints as a Barrier to Export Participation.

The paper analyzes the link between financial constraints and firms' export decisions, using a large micro-level data set on French Manufacturing firms over the 1996-2004 period. Our main finding is that firms enjoying better ex-ante financial heath are more likely to start exporting. This results contrasts with the previous empirical literature which found evidence that participation to exports market improves a firm financial health but not that export starters display specific ex-ante financial advantages. By contrast, our result supports the view that financial constraints act as a barrier to export participation. This finding has important policy implications as it suggests that, in presence of financial markets imperfections, public intervention can be called for to help efficient but financially constrained firms to overcome the sunk entry costs into export markets and expand their activities abroad.Export;Firm heterogeneity;Financial constraint;Sunk costs;

Financial Constraints and Firm Export Behavior

The paper analyzes the link between financial constraints and firm export behavior. Our main finding is that firms enjoying better financial health are more likely to become exporters. The result contrasts with the previous empirical literature which found evidence that export participation improves firm financial health, but not that export starters display any ex-ante financial advantage. On the contrary, we find that financial constraints act as a barrier to export participation. Better access to external financial resources increases the probability to start exporting and also shortens the time before firms decide to serve foreign customers. This finding has important policy implications as it suggests that, in presence of financial markets imperfections, public intervention can be called for to help efficient but financially constrained firms to overcome the sunk entry costs into export markets and expand their activities abroad.Export; Firm heterogeneity; Financial constraints; Sunk costs

Exports and Productivity: Comparable Evidence for 14 Countries

We use comparable micro level panel data for 14 countries and a set of identically specified empirical models to investigate the relationship between exports and productivity. Our overall results are in line with the big picture that is by now familiar from the literature: Exporters are more productive than non-exporters when observed and unobserved heterogeneity are controlled for, and these exporter productivity premia tend to increase with the share of exports in total sales; there is strong evidence in favour of self-selection of more productive firms into export markets, but nearly no evidence in favour of the learning-by-exporting hypothesis. We document that the exporter premia differ considerably across countries in identically specified empirical models. In a meta-analysis of our results we find that countries that are more open and have more effective government report higher productivity premia. However, the level of development per se does not appear to be an explanation for the observed cross-country differences.Exports, productivity, micro data, international comparison

Financial leverage and export quality: evidence from France

Does corporate financial structure matter for a firm’s ability to compete in international markets through output quality? This study answers this question by using firm-level export and balance sheet data covering a large sample of French manufacturing exporters over the period 1997–2007. The main result is that there is a negative causal relation between a firm’s leverage and export quality, where quality is inferred from the estimation of a discrete choice model of foreign consumers’ demand. This result is robust across different specifications and estimation techniques. In addition, by estimating investment models we find that the negative impact of leverage on quality is consistent with theories predicting that the agency cost of debt determines suboptimal investment

Productivity and market selection of french manufacturing firms in the nineties

In this paper, we analyse post-entry and pre-exit performance of French manufacturing firms using a dataset covering 14 industries over the period 1990-2002. Our purpose is to shed light on the working of market selection mechanisms within French manufacturing industries. We found that market selection in France rightly operates in favour of more productive firms, but displays some potential inefficiency in selecting more severely new firms compared to mature firms. This claim is based on three results. First, on average, young firms fail to survive when they are faced with a small productivity disadvantage with respect to incumbents. By contrast, mature firms exit the market only when they are confronted by a large, persistent, and increasing productivity gap with their surviving counterparts. Second, we show that successful entrants do not easily catch up to the average size of the industry despite the fact that they exhibit significant TFP and profitability advantages over incumbents. This reveals the existence of barriers to growth for young firms. Thirdly, we show that, on the whole, productivity improvements due to market selection mechanisms within French manufacturing industries are primarily due to market share reallocation across incumbents and that the net entry effect is weak relative to the findings for other industrialised countries