Productivity growth and functional upgrading in foreign subsidiaries in the Slovenian manufacturing sector

The paper discusses the determinants of productivity growth in manufacturing foreign subsidiaries in Slovenia. Special attention is given to the impact of control pattern. Using the standard growth accounting approach we show that productivity growth is significantly and positively correlated with the level of foreign parent companies' control of marketing and strategic business functions. Larger subsidiaries and subsidiaries with higher exports to sales ratio also experience higher changes in the productivity level. Subsidiaries in high technology intensity sectors exhibit significantly lower change in productivity than subsidiaries in other sectors

Performance after mass privatisation : the case of Slovenia

Initial ownership structures resulting from the mass privatisation programme were intended as transitional, whereas optimal would be set up gradually and would result from secondary transactions. Therefore, mass privatisation is typically considered successful if secondary transactions lead to improved ownership, in particular, with emergence of strategic investors. If this approach is correct, positive effects of mass privatisation are thus not shown only by companies remaining in control of initial owners but mostly by the companies that have already gone through secondary privatisation. Accordingly, the success of secondary sales is to be evaluated by how successfully companies perform after the sale to new owners. This paper attempts to verify empirically those assumptions. The econometric analysis of panel data, after correcting for a selection bias, shows that TFP (total factor productivity) growth is highest in public companies. In addition we found that the secondary privatisation has had practically no positive effect on economic efficiency in the period 1995-99. We interpret these results as supporting evidence for the theoretical approach, which argues that the impact of strategic investors on performance may be ambiguous and that the quality of the capital market institutions is more important than ownership effects. The former creates incentives for performance by increasing the cost of expropriation of minority shareholders

Buildings behaving badly:A behavioral experiment on how different motivational frames influence residential energy label adoption in the Netherlands

Heating buildings contributes to approximately 36% of Europe’s energy demand and several EU member states have adopted mandatory energy labels to improve energy efficiency by promoting home weatherization investments. This paper focuses on the perception of the energy label for residential buildings in the Netherlands and the role of different frames (egoistic, biospheric and social norms and neutral frames) in motivating adoption of energy labels for housing. We used a behavioral email experiment and an online survey to investigate these motivational factors. We find that biospheric frames are weaker than the other three motivational frames in terms of engaging interest in the energy label, but that the biospheric frame results in higher willingness to pay (WTP) for the energy label. We also find that age (rather than income) correlates with higher willingness to pay for home energy labels

Every bordered Riemann surface is a complete proper curve in a ball

We prove that every bordered Riemann surface admits a complete proper holomorphic immersion into a ball of C^2, and a complete proper holomorphic embedding into a ball of C^3.Comment: Math. Ann., in pres

Light and tree size influence belowground development in yellow birch and sugar maple

The effects of light and tree size on the root architecture and mycorrhiza of yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis Britton) and sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh) growing in the understory of deciduous forests in southern Qu

Impact of Firm Heterogeneity on Direct and Spillover Effects of FDI: Micro Evidence from Ten Transition Countries

This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of ten transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the largest firm level dataset (more than 90,000 firms) used by any study on the spillover effects of FDI. The main novelty of the paper is the explicit control for various sources of firm heterogeneity when accounting for different effects of FDI on firm performance. Controlling for these variables leads to some interesting results which contrast with the previous empirical work in the field. We find that horizontal spillovers have become increasingly important over the last decade, and they may even become more important than vertical spillovers. Furthermore, this work shows that the heterogeneity of firms in terms of absorptive capacity, size, productivity and technology levels affect the results. These findings suggest that both direct effects from foreign ownership as well as the spillovers from foreign firms substantially depend on the absorptive capacity and productivity level of individual firms. Only more productive firms and firms with higher absorptive capacities are able to both compete with foreign affiliates in the same sector and benefit from the increased upstream demand for intermediates generated by foreign affiliates. In addition, these results show that foreign presence may also affect smaller firms to a larger extent than larger firms, but this impact may be in either direction.status: publishe