Back to normal? The future of global production networks.

It is neither likely nor desirable for central banks to exit from unconventional monetary policies in the near future. However, it is important that central banks develop an exit strategy, evaluate the merits of new and old monetary policy tools and communicate with the public so as to maintain financial stability, support economic growth and minimize future inflationary risks. Central bank communication policy will turn out to be crucial and more challenging than it was before the crisis.Wertschöpfung; Outsourcing; Business Network; Offshoring; Globalisierung; Wirtschaftskrise;

Suppliers of multinationals and the forced linkage effect: Evidence from firm level data

Using information on more than 1000 firms in a number of emerging countries, we find quantitative evidence that suppliers of multinationals that are pressured by their customers to reduce production costs or develop new products have higher productivity growth than other firms, including other host country suppliers of multinationals. These findings provide first empirical support for a 'forced linkage effect' from supplying multinational companies. Our findings hold controlling for other factors within and outside the supplier- customer relationship and when endogeneity concerns are taken into consideration

Suppliers of multinationals and the forced linkage effect: Evidence from firm level data

Using information on more than 1000 firms in a number of emerging countries, we find quantitative evidence that suppliers of multinationals that are pressured by their customers to reduce production costs or develop new products have higher productivity growth than other firms, including other host country suppliers of multinationals. These findings provide first empirical support for a forced linkage effect from supplying multinational companies. Our findings hold controlling for other factors within and outside the supplier-customer relationship and when endogeneity concerns are taken into consideration

Back to normal? The future of global production networks

It is neither likely nor desirable for central banks to exit from unconventional monetary policies in the near future. However, it is important that central banks develop an exit strategy, evaluate the merits of new and old monetary policy tools and communicate with the public so as to maintain financial stability, support economic growth and minimize future inflationary risks. Central bank communication policy will turn out to be crucial and more challenging than it was before the crisis

Headquarter services, skill intensity and labour demand elasticities in multinational firms

Using information on a panel of multinational firms operating in the United Kingdom from 1996 to 2005, we find that labour demand in domestic multinationals is less sensitive to own labour costs changes than in foreign multinationals. This difference in wage elasticity of labour demand persists even if we allow for a distinct labour elasticity in multinational firms according to their level of skill intensity or their intangible assets. This suggests that the provision of headquarter services in domestic multinational firms shields against strong fluctuations in labour demand. In terms of labour demand elasticity reduction, the estimated shielding role of headquarter services is about 40 percent

Trust-based work-time and product improvements: Evidence from firm level data

We explore whether the introduction of trust based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Employing a panel data set of over 5,000 German establishments, we implement a propensity score matching approach where we only consider firms that did not use trust based work contracts initially. Our results show that firms which adopt such contracts tend to be between 11 to 14 percent more likely to improve products. These results hold when we control for another form of flexible time work arrangements, namely working time accounts. Thus, the positive relationship between the adoption of trust based working hours and innovation seems to be driven by the degree of control and self-management over working days, rather than by merely allowing time flexibility

The impact of commodity price changes on rural households: The case of coffee in Uganda

Policies and external shocks affecting agriculture, the main source of income for rural households, can be expected to have a significant impact on poverty. This paper studies the case of Uganda. Throughout the 1990s, more than 90 percent of its poor lived in rural areas and, during the same period, large international price fluctuations as well as an extensive domestic deregulation affected the coffee sector, its main source of export revenues. Using data from three household surveys covering the 1990s, this paper confirms a strong correlation between changes in coffee prices (in a liberalized market) and poverty reduction. This is clearly highlighted by comparing the performance of different households grouped according to their dependence on coffee farming. Regression analysis (based on pooled data from the three surveys) of consumption expenditure on coffee-related variables, other controls and time fixed effects, corroborates that the mentioned correlation is not spurious. We also find that while both poor and rich farmers enter the coffee sector, the price boom benefits relatively more the poorer households, whereas the liberalization seems to create more opportunities for richer farmers. Finally, notwithstanding the importance of the coffee price boom, the agricultural policy framework and the thorough structural reforms in which the coffee market liberalization was embedded have certainly played a role in triggering overall agricultural growth. These factors appear to matter especially in the second half of the 1990s when prices went down but poverty reduction continued

Kondo-lattice model: Application to the temperature-dependent electronic structure of EuO(100) films

We present calculations for the temperature-dependent electronic structure and magnetic properties of thin ferromagnetic EuO films. The treatment is based on a combination of a multiband-Kondo lattice model with first-principles TB-LMTO band structure calculations. The method avoids the problem of double-counting of relevant interactions and takes into account the correct symmetry of the atomic orbitals. We discuss the temperature-dependent electronic structures of EuO(100) films in terms of quasiparticle densities of states and quasiparticle band structures. The Curie temperature T_C of the EuO films turns out to be strongly thickness-dependent, starting from a very low value = 15K for the monolayer and reaching the bulk value at about 25 layers

CoRoT observations of O stars: diverse origins of variability

Six O-type stars were observed continuously by the CoRoT satellite during a 34.3-day run. The unprecedented quality of the data allows us to detect even low-amplitude stellar pulsations in some of these stars (HD 46202 and the binaries HD 46149 and Plaskett's star). These cover both opacity-driven modes and solar-like stochastic oscillations, both of importance to the asteroseismological modelling of O stars. Additional effects can be seen in the CoRoT light curves, such as binarity and rotational modulation. Some of the hottest O-type stars (HD 46223, HD 46150 and HD 46966) are dominated by the presence of red-noise: we speculate that this is related to a sub-surface convection zone.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, conference paper. To be published in "Four decades of Research on Massive Stars", Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Eds. C. Robert, N. St-Louis and L. Drisse