Global Networks of Trade and Bits

Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to produce detailed topologies of the Internet. Although Internet topology data have been brought to the attention of a wide and somewhat diverse audience of scholars, so far they have been overlooked by economists. In this paper, we suggest that such data could be effectively treated as a proxy to characterize the size of the "digital economy" at country level and outsourcing: thus, we analyse the topological structure of the network of trade in digital services (trade in bits) and compare it with that of the more traditional flow of manufactured goods across countries. To perform meaningful comparisons across networks with different characteristics, we define a stochastic benchmark for the number of connections among each country-pair, based on hypergeometric distribution. Original data are thus filtered by means of different thresholds, so that we only focus on the strongest links, i.e., statistically significant links. We find that trade in bits displays a sparser and less hierarchical network structure, which is more similar to trade in high-skill manufactured goods than total trade. Lastly, distance plays a more prominent role in shaping the network of international trade in physical goods than trade in digital services.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figure

Business performance and angels presence: A fresh look from France 2008–2011

Business angels enjoy a strong reputation for being more efficient than other investors among policy makers, practitioners, and scholars. However, due to the limited availability of specific financial data, previous research has barely assessed the impact of angels on companies’ performance. This paper seeks to bridge this gap by providing evidence from a unique dataset made up of 432 angel-backed French companies which are compared to two control groups, one randomly selected and another one consisting of similar enterprises. This double comparison process enables us to purge our analysis of structural effect and to demonstrate the importance of the methodology in generating the sample. Indeed, the results we obtain significantly differ depending on the control group. Our results show that the positive influence of angels depends on the condition of the comparison. The set of BA-backed companies is more likely to exhibit superior performance when it is compared to a random sample whereas the companies’ performance is either identical or worse when it is compared to a sample composed of k-nearest neighbors. In addition, using a quantile regression technique makes it possible to differentiate the effect of business angels based on the distribution of the value of the growth rate. © 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York

TBTs, firm organization and labor structure

This article investigates the effect of shocks to the occupational structure of exporting firms induced by the introduction of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) in importing countries. We rely on specific trade concerns data to identify trade-restrictive TBT measures, combined with matched employer-employee data for French exporters over the period 1995-2010, and information on the product-destinations served by each exporter. Controlling for time-invariant firm/occupation fixed effects and for time-varying sector/occupation shocks, the 2SLS estimates show that exporting firms adapt to the imposition of TBTs at destination by increasing the share of managers at the expense of blue collars, white collars and other professionals

Effective Tax Rates as a Determinant of Foreign Direct Investment in Central and East European Countries: A Panel Analysis

The Central- and East European Countries have lowered their corporate tax rates substantially in order to induce shifts of production capacity to their countries. This paper analyses empirically how inward Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows channeled to these countries reacts to these tax policies. We estimate a panel of 35 bilateral country-relationships over a period of 1995-2002. Results suggest a semielasticity of -2.93 which is in line with results derived in studies mainly on OECD countries. This indicates that from an individual country perspective, tax-lowering strategies have been successful in the past, yet they may not be a successful policy option for the future when privatization-related FDI will decrease.Series: Discussion Papers SFB International Tax Coordinatio

Foreign ownership and its effects on employment and wages : the case of Sweden

In this paper, we study how foreign ownership of Swedish companies affects employment and wages. To study these effects, we specify a model based on the assumption that the Swedish labour market can be described as one where trade unions and employers bargain over employment and wages. Our hypothesis is that bargaining power is affected by institutional settings and the ownership of the firm. To test our hypothesis, we used a panel data set of 242 large Swedish manufacturing firms over the period 1980–2005. The results indicate no significant impact of foreign ownership on employment or wages in Sweden