A false friend exercise with authentic material retrieved from a corpus

This paper presents a CALL exercise that aims to raise the learner's awareness of false friends. In the exercise, the learner is asked to mark words in a text that are similar in form to a word in his or her native language and then to classify these words according to three levels of meaning correspondence. Text is randomly selected from a corpus and integrated into the exercise. A preliminary evaluation shows that mature students understand the exercise well

Exports and Firm Characteristics – First Evidence from Fractional Probit Panel Estimates

Using recently released nationally representative data and a new estimator for fractional probit panel models, this paper reconsiders the relationship between the fraction of exports in total sales and firm characteristics in West and East German manufacturing. Controlling for unobserved firm characteristics no impact of human capital and R&D intensity on export performance is found, while firm size is positively related to exporting in West Germany only.Exports, firm characteristics, fractional probit panel model, Germany

Exports, Foreign Direct Investment, and Productivity: Evidence from German Firm Level Data

This paper presents the first empirical test with German establishment level data of a hypothesis derived by Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple in a model that explains the decision of heterogeneous firms to serve foreign markets either trough exports or foreign direct investment: only the more productive firms choose to serve the foreign markets, and the most productive among this group will further choose to serve these markets via foreign direct investments. Using a non-parametric test for first order stochastic dominance it is shown that, in line with this hypothesis, the productivity distribution of foreign direct investors dominates that of exporters, which in turn dominates that of national market suppliers.Exports, Foreign Direct Investment, Productivity, Firm level data, Germany, Heterogeneous firms

Productivity and Size of the Export Market - Evidence for West and East Geman Plants. 2004

Using unique recently released nationally representative high-quality data at the plant level, this paper presents the first comprehensive evidence on the relationship between productivity and size of the export market for Germany, a leading actor on the world market for manufactured goods. It documents that firms that export to countries inside the euro-zone are more productive than firms that sell their products in Germany only, but less productive than firms that export to countries outside the euro-zone, too. This is in line with the hypothesis that export markets outside the euro-zone have higher entry costs that can only by paid by more productive firms.Exports, productivity, micro data, Germany

Exports, Foreign Direct Investments and Productivity: Are Services Firms different?

This paper contributes to the literature on international firm activities and firm performance by providing the first evidence on the link of productivity and both exports and foreign direct investment (fdi) in services firms from a highly developed country. It uses unique new data from Germany - one of the leading actors on the world market for services - that merge information from regular surveys and from a one-time special purpose survey performed by the Statistical Offices. Descriptive statistics, parametric and non-parametric statistical tests and regression analyses (with and without explicitly taking differences along the conditional productivity distribution and firms with extreme values, or outliers, into account) indicate that the productivity pecking order found in numerous studies using data for firms from manufacturing industries – where the firms with the highest productivity engage in fdi while the least productive firms serve the home market only and the productivity of exporting firms is in between – does not exist among firms from services industries. In line with the theoretical model and the empirical results for software firms from India provided by Bhattacharya, Patnaik and Shah (2010) there is evidence that firms with fdi are less productive than firms that export.Exports, foreign direct investments, productivity, services firms

German Works Councils and Productivity: First Evidence from a Nonparametric Test

This paper presents the first nonparametric test whether German works councils go hand in hand with higher labor productivity or not. It distinguishes between establishments that are covered by collective bargaining or not. Results from a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for first order stochastic dominance tend to indicate that pro-productive effects are found in firms with collective bargaining only. However, the significance level of the test statistic is higher than a usually applied critical level. This somewhat weak evidence casts doubts on the validity of results from recent parametric approaches using a regression framework that point to high positive effects of works councils on productivity.Works councils, productivity, stochastic dominance

International Firm Activities and Innovation: Evidence from Knowledge Production Functions for German Firms

Using a knowledge production framework and a rich set of plant level data this study demonstrates that in Germany firms that are active on international markets as exporters or foreign direct investors do generate more new knowledge than firms which sell on the national market only. These differences are not only due to a larger firm size, or different industries, or the use of more researchers in these firms, but due to the fact these globally engaged firms learn more from external sources, too. The importance of these knowledge sources varies with the type of innovation. These results, which are broadly in line with the findings of a recent study using UK firm level data, can help to explain the strong positive correlation between productivity and international activities of firms. Firms that are active on markets beyond the national borders generate higher levels of new knowledge that feed into higher productivity.Exports, foreign direct investment, knowledge production function, Germany

Nascent and infant entrepreneurs in Germany. Evidence from the Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor (REM)

Based on data from a recent representative survey of the adult population in Germany this paper documents that the patterns of variables influencing nascent and infant entrepreneurship are quite similar and broadly in line with our theoretical priors – both types of entrepreneurship are fostered by the width of experience and a role model in the family, and hindered by risk aversion, while being male is a supporting factor. Results of this study using cross section data are in line with conclusions from longitudinal studies for other countries finding that between one in two and one in three nascent entrepreneurs become infant entrepreneurs, and that observed individual characteristics – with the important exception of former experience as an employee in the industry of the new venture - tend to play a minor role only in differentiating who starts and who gives up.Nascent Entrepreneurs, Infant Entrepreneurs, Regional Entrepreneurship Monitor, REM, Germany

The Research Potential of New Types of Enterprise Data Based on Surveys from Official Statistics in Germany

A new generation of data sets became available recently in the research data centres of the German statistical offices. These new data combine information for firms gathered in different surveys (or from other sources) that could not be analyzed jointly before. This paper offers a short description of these data, and gives examples of their use to demonstrate their research potential. Furthermore, and looking ahead to the next generation of data, it discusses an ongoing project, KombiFiD, that will for the first time offer access to linked firm level data collected by different data producing public institutions.enterprise data, Germany, research data centres

Average Wage, Qualification of the Workforce and Export Performance in German Enterprises: Evidence from KombiFiD Data

Empirical investigations with enterprise level data from official statistics often use the average wage as a proxy variable for the qualification of the workforce, mostly due to the lack of detailed information on the qualification of the employees. This paper uses unique newly available data for German enterprises from the KombiFiD project that for the first time combine information from the statistics of employees covered by social security and information from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices to look at the quality of this proxy variable by investigating the link between the average wage in a firm and the qualification of the workforce. Furthermore, it demonstrates that detailed information on the qualification of the workforce sheds new light on the role of highly qualified employees for success on export markets that is not revealed by the average wage as a proxy variable. Based on the results of this paper it is argued that combined firm level data that stem from different data producers should be widely accessible for research.qualification of workforce, average wage, export, firm level data