Employment dynamics of newly established and traditional firms: A comparison of Russia and the Ukraine.

Dynamics; Employment; Firms;

Agglomeration economies, globalization and productivity. Firm level evidence for Slovenia.

This paper analyzes the impact of agglomeration economies on firm level performance measured by total factor productivity for Slovenia. To estimate total factor productivity, we use a control function approach to capture endogenous input choices and self selection. In contrast to most of the literature, we introduce agglomeration economies that are linked to globalization. In particular, we distinguish between knowledge spillovers related to domestic and foreign sources of agglomeration effects and analyze the impact of regional export market exposure, which we call international market access. We find positive effects of regional knowledge spillovers and international market access on firm level total factor productivity. These effects are stronger for micro and small firms and for firms operating in service sectors. We also show that knowledge spillovers are amplified when there are more foreign multinationals in a region.

Import Churning and Export Performance of Multi-Product Firms

This paper analyzes the impact of churning in the imported varieties of capital and intfirmediate inputs on firm export scope and productivity. Using detailed data on imports and exports at the firm?product-market level, we document substantial churning in both imports and exports for the Slovenian manufacturing firms in the period 1994-2008. On average, a firm changes about one quarter of imported and exported product-markets every year, while gross churning in tfirms of added and dropped product-markets is almost three times higher. A substantial share of this product churning is due to simultaneous imports and exports of firms in identical varieties within the same CN-8 product code (so called pass-on-trade). We find that churning in imported varieties is far more important than reduction in tariffs or declines in import prices for firms' productivity growth and increased export product scope. We also find that gross churning has a bigger impact on firm productivity improvements by a factor of more than 10 in comparison to the net churning. Both adding and dropping of imported input varieties thus seem to be of utmost importance for firms aiming to optimize their input mix towards their most valuable inputs. These effects are further enhanced when excluding the simultaneous trade in identical varieties, suggesting that pass-on-trade has less favorable effects on firms' long-run perfirmance than regular trade

Pass-on trade: Why do firms simultaneously engage in two-way trade in the same varieties?

This paper documents that a large fraction of trade flows at the firm level consists of simultaneous imports and exports in identical products, narrowly defined at the 8-digit product classification, which we call Pass-On Trade, POT. We use data on imports and exports at the firm–product level for Slovenian manufacturing firms in the period 1994-2008, to show that, on average, 70 percent of all exporting firms engage in POT. This corresponds to more than 50 percent of all exported products. Thus, imported products that are exported again by the same firm is a statistical regularity of trade of Slovenian manufacturing firms. We document that the use of POT is increasing in firm size, product diversification, multinational status as well as firm productivity and profitability. We offer and explore empirically a number of explanations for POT. Among possible explanations, we find evidence on the importance of firms’ multinational networks and demand complementarities between firms’ own and POT products. The latter confirms the theoretical explanations for ‘Carry-Along Trade’ (CAT) as developed by the recent work of Bernard et al (2010, 2012)

Gross Job Flows in Ukraine: Size, Ownership and Trade Effects

This paper documents and analyses gross job flows and their determinants in Ukraine using a unique data set of more than 2200 Ukrainian firms operating in both the manufacturing and the non-manufacturing sector for the years 1998-2000. There are several important findings in the paper. Job destruction is dominating job creation in both 1999 and 2000. In connection with other evidence we infer from this that Ukraine is only at the beginning of the restructuring process. The most clear-cut result of our analysis is the strong positive effect of new private firms on net employment growth, a finding established for other transition economies as well. At the same time, we do not find differences in the employment growth of state-owned and privatised firms. Apart from ownership effects we also find, at the firm level, an inverse correlation of size and net employment growth and of size and job reallocation. Finally, we establish that strong foreign trade links force firms to shed labour more aggressively and to engage in more restructuring when trade is directed to and originating from Western economies. This disciplining function is absent when the trade flows are confined to CIS countries.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39906/3/wp521.pd