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Export performance is a highly debated topic in the literature, with no consensus on how to measure it or what factors determine it. Most studies divide these factors into internal and external determinants, with a focus on internal determinants. This study, however, focuses on external determinants, namely agglomeration economies such as localization and urbanization economies and export spillovers, and their impact on a firm's export intensity. Based on a large sample of Portuguese manufacturing SMEs over the period 2010 to 2018 (191,920 firm/year observations), the estimation results through the two-stage least squares method with fixed effects strongly indicate the existence of a positive relationship between agglomeration economies, particularly localization economies and export spillovers, and export performance. These findings suggest that firms located in areas with a high concentration of other firms in the same industry and other exporting firms tend to have better export performance, which has important implications for policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food delivery applications have grown rapidly in recent years, fueled by increasing consumer demand for convenience and prepared foods. Previous studies on what factors encourage consumers to use delivery platforms rely largely on survey data, likely due to the lack of availability of restaurant or industry level data. Utilizing web-scraping techniques to collect restaurant level data from one of the biggest delivery applications in South Korea, Yogiyo, this study conducts an analysis on spatial market structure of the restaurant business. Through restaurant level data, market expansion, changes in the number of restaurants to order from, and changes in prices across regions with delivery application are considered. Analysis suggests that the average number of orderable restaurants increased from a nearby 2.3 restaurants to distant 13.5 restaurants with customers willingly paying for delivery fees according to distance via the delivery application. As the restaurant delivery market becomes spatially more competitive with an additional 13.5 restaurants, it is found that aggregate prices totaled with food prices and delivery fees from two restaurants in different locations converge to serve the customers between the two restaurants. In addition, the increased degree of competition due to increased number of restaurants leads the aggregate prices to decrease by between 5.13 and 7.56%, depending on regional characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public procurement contracts (PPCs) of goods, services, and works are about one-tenth of the global gross domestic product. Much research has been conducted on government spending and its aggregate effects, but the evidence is scarce at the micro-level. We exploit sealed-bid PPC auctions of construction works, discontinuity in bidders' win margin, and firms' daily employment variation to provide a causal estimate of winning a PPC on firms' employment. Winning a PPC has a small positive impact on a firm's short-run employment. We investigate mechanisms and heterogeneity that can explain the small initial magnitudes. We find no compelling evidence in favor of political connections, an information leakage channel, or PPC size as explanations for the small magnitude. Our investigation of a longer period shows that the impact phases out in less than a year. The lack of a long-term impact is due to runners-up winning more PPCs and runners-up substituting for more market revenue in the year after closely losing a PPC. Finally, the impacts are concentrated in construction firms that conduct most contracted work in-house. The final estimation shows the effect is 3.7 new employees per PPC with a public cost per job created at €58,600 (€49,800–€65,100). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global COVID-19 pandemic triggered a renewed impetus for the countercyclical role of development banks, marked by widespread adoption of diverse instruments to mitigate its impact. Argentina's development bank (BICE, Banco de Inversión y Comercio Exterior, specialized in loan for long term investment, responded to the 2020 health and economic crises implementing a working capital loan program. Amidst a lack of substantial evidence on the efficacy of similar counter-cyclical interventions, we employed a quasi-experimental methodology, incorporating Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and Fixed Effects (FE) estimations, to evaluate the program's impact. Our results demonstrate that firms benefiting from the loan maintained employment levels, in stark contrast to a nearly 6 per cent decrease for those without it. The program effectively mitigated the employment impact of the transient shock. Robustness checks, along with falsification tests, bolster our identification strategy. Complementary findings emphasize that the program's success lies in providing credit during adverse conditions, when private sector credit contracts. This insight, rather than the exceptional terms of the credit, offers a crucial lesson for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the present study is to identify prerequisites for business development in the conditions of polycrisis in the EU member states of South-Eastern Europe. In the context of digital transformation and the low-carbon transition, this can have an impact on changing their economic policy.

This paper employs the difference-in-differences (DID) to investigate the impact of “going global” on enterprises' financialization. Baseline estimation shows that the degree of financialization of enterprises participating in the Belt and Road Initiative was lower compared with those not participating in the Initiative. Mechanism analysis reveals that “going global” through Belt and Road Initiative has improved enterprises' profitability of real sector investment and inhibited their motivation of financialization. These findings provide new perspectives for more effectively promoting enterprises to participate in the Belt and Road construction and helping inhibit enterprises’ financialization.

The rapid expansion of digital technology has increasingly challenged conventional knowledge in corporate green innovation. Debate surrounding whether and how enterprise digital transformation enhances green innovation outcomes is gathering pace. However, there remains no conclusive evidence, in large part because the motivation for green innovation is overlooked. Using data from Chinese publicly listed firms between 2008 and 2021, this study explores the impact of digital transformation on the underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions of green innovation through the lens of company motivations, distinguishing green innovation as substantive-driven and strategic-driven. The results reveal that digital transformation significantly impacts green innovation by strengthening the resource and knowledge bases, which is consistent with the resource-based view. However, considering the motivations of green innovation, we find that digital transformation positively affects substantive innovation, but does not affect strategic green innovation. We further explore the boundary conditions of digital transformation's effects on green innovation by analyzing the moderating effect of environmental orientation (EO) and separating EO's motivations into voluntary-driven and mandatory-driven. The results show that environmental orientation positively moderates the relationship between digital transformation and green innovation and that only voluntary-driven EO has a positive moderating effect. Our findings add new insights to the theory linking strategy decision-making to green innovation performance, with specific regard to firms' motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of agricultural trade liberalization on economic activity and political violence in emerging countries. We use data on all preferential trade agreements (PTAs) signed between 25 low- and middle-income countries and their high-income trade partners between 1995 and 2013. We exploit the implied reduction in agricultural tariffs over time combined with variation within countries in their suitability to produce liberalized crops to find that economic activity increases differentially in affected areas. We also find strong positive effects on political violence, and present evidence consistent with both producer- and consumer-side mechanisms: violence increases differentially in more urbanized areas that are suitable to produce less labour-intensive crops as well as crops that are consumed locally. Our estimates imply that economic activity and political violence would have been around 2% and 7% lower, respectively, across countries in our sample had the PTAs not been signed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building upon resource-based view (RBV) theory, this cross-sectional study employed binary logistic regression to examine the influence of firm-level factors on the performance of 435 Tanzanian micro and small agri-food processing firms. The results of the study show that intangible resources, age (enterprise, manager), and management practices (target setting, working capital management, and performance monitoring) have a significant influence on firm performance. Firm size, tangible resources, and managers' education level were not significant predictors of firm performance. The findings confirmed the RBV argument that intangible resources contribute more to the variation in firm performance compared to tangible resources. This study adds to the limited research on the combined effect of firm-specific characteristics, firm resources, managerial characteristics, and selected management practices on the performance of micro and small firms in emerging economies. The findings will help managers to identify success factors that are significant for better performance and will support policymakers to design strategies that can effectively contribute to the development of micro and small enterprises in the agri-food subsector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries with strict employment protection legislation, firms may seek to replace regular by atypical jobs in order to cut wages or to become more flexible. In Germany, the number of unprotected temporary jobs is comparatively low. During the past decades, temporary agency employment, however, has increased considerably and the share of agency workers is now above the EU average. Using German establishment data, the analysis draws on longitudinal (generalized method of moments) and cross-sectional (matching and difference in differences) methods to evaluate whether agency workers replaced or supplemented regular workers during and after the Great Recession of 2008/2009. The study finds that hiring (more) agency workers made it possible for user firms among Germany's core manufacturing industries to employ a larger number of regular workers at the same time. In specific sectors and regions, temp agencies therefore provided an alternative to government-sponsored instruments such as short-time work schemes. Obviously, from the view of workers, many disadvantages remain, even more so as it is rare for temp spells to offer a stepping stone into regular employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of the firms' external environment on their export intensity. More specifically, it assesses whether domestic market characteristics such as domestic demand and general export environment related to tradability across borders affect firms' export intensity. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use a sample of 29,266 firms from nine European countries, for the period of 2010–2016, and test several estimation methods (random effects models, Tobit models, and Heckman's selection models). Findings: Results show that external factors such as domestic demand and ease of trade across borders are important determinants of firms' export intensity. Moreover, results reveal that firm's internal characteristics such as age, size and productivity also play an import role. Originality/value: Studies about the influence of the firms' external environment on firms' export intensity are scarce because most of them are confined to a single country context. In this way, the present study contributes to the body of knowledge on the influence that external factors can have on firms' export performance by analyzing firms from nine European countries, which has important policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of digitalization on the participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in export and import activities. Using data on Spanish manufacturing SMEs from 2001 to 2014, we construct a multidimensional firm-level index of digitalization. We then estimate a set of dynamic models analyzing the direct and indirect (via total factor productivity) effects of digitalization on firms' export and import strategies. We find evidence that firms' digitalization positively influences the probability of exporting and importing, both directly and through productivity. We find that productivity has a stronger impact on SMEs' trade behavior than the direct channel of digitalization. A one standard deviation increase in the digitalization index increases the probability of exporting and importing by 1.5 and 0.8 percentage points, respectively, while the same increase in the logarithm of productivity has a three times greater effect for exporting and nine times greater for importing. Plain English Summary: Digitalization facilitates the access of SMEs to international markets. In this study, we analyze how the use of digital technologies affects Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in their ability to access foreign markets. We find that digitization can help SMEs to export and import, both directly (by facilitating access to a larger market of customers and suppliers) and by improving their productivity. Interestingly, we also find that productivity has a greater impact on trade decisions than the direct channel of digitalization. It should be noted that not all digital technologies have the same effect on trade participation, and that automation technologies only influence trade through the productivity channel. Based on our findings, policymakers interested in helping SMEs export and integrate into global markets should support their digital transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge transfers across firms through labor mobility can generate positive productivity spillovers. When workers move from one firm to another, they bring obtained knowledge and experience to the receiving firm. Therefore, labor mobility is expected to have a positive impact on the productivity of enterprises. This study investigates the link between knowledge diffusion and labor mobility using a comprehensive matched employer-employee dataset of the Dutch manufacturing sector. I examine the hypothesis that hiring workers from high-productivity firms increases the productivity of hiring firms. The analysis suggests a positive association between hiring from more productive firms and productivity gain one year after hiring. Furthermore, I find that worker mobility within the same sector is associated with more diffusion of knowledge and skills than worker mobility across sectors. Additionally, my results suggest that hiring by large firms is associated with productivity gains as long as at least some new workers come from more productive firms, even if the average productivity gap across all new hiring is negative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of domestic market concentration on firm-level export. While the national-champion rationale actually rests on firmer theoretical ground, the empirical literature generally supports the positive effects of domestic rivalry. We employ a dataset of manufacturing Cameroonian firms from 2009 and 2016 and use the probit and Tobit II estimates. We find no direct relationship between concentration and exports. However, we test whether economies of scale (through size), technological constraint (ICT), and foreign participation (FDI) can influence this relationship. The results show that through the adoption of ICT, the internal rivalry effect is operational. In low industrial concentration (in more competitive market), the most digital firms improve their international market share. Robustness tests (2SLS and fractional probit) confirm these results. Government needs to direct their policies towards increased firm digitalization in order to improve their competitiveness in foreign markets. In order to enhance the positive effects of these policies, the policies should be directed towards the least concentrated industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines business–politics ties during a shift from multi-party politics to competitive-authoritarian rule in Turkey. We conducted a longitudinal investigation of the political ties and performance ranking of top manufacturing firms in a provincial industrial centre, Gaziantep. The analysis demonstrates that major power transitions in centre politics elicited variegated local responses and intra-group contestations. The leading business elites sustained political capital through a multi-scalar diversification of political ties. Using an agent, network, and institutions framework, we highlight the political dynamics behind sub-national growth trajectories, and contribute to scholarship on urban party politics and elite localism in economic geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation in digital technology has changed the way firms make business. The objective of this paper is to analyse the effect of mobile money adoption on the performance of informal businesses in Zambia. The data are from the 2019 Zambia Informal Sector Business Survey of the World Bank Group with a sample of 914 firms. An instrumental variable bivariate probit model was used to analyse the data. We find that mobile money use helps significantly improve informal business performance. The finding is robust for different purposes of mobile money use. These results can be attributed to the lower transaction costs and the improved liquidity related to the use of mobile money financial services. An important policy implication is that the use of digital technologies such as mobile money could be a key element for improving informal business performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In drug patent litigation settlements, the plaintiff brand commonly licenses the defendant generic to sell before patent expiry. Some agreements require the generic to pay the brand royalties. Despite the superficial flow of payments, royalty terms may function as part of an anticompetitive "reverse payment" made to the generic in exchange for delayed entry. Typically, the brand launches its own authorized generic (AG) during the first-to-file generic's 180-day exclusivity period so initially there are two generic competitors. A royalty structure that deters the brand's AG launch reduces the number of entrants to one, conveying net value to the generic by allowing it to capture the entire generic market, potentially inducing it to delay its entry. Royalties usually have no place in a brand–generic agreement between rational actors. However, our simple model shows that when royalties are conditioned on the brand's AG launch, a range of royalty rates exists that conveys net value to the generic by deterring the brand from rationally introducing an AG. Royalty terms that are conditioned on the brand's AG launch thus raise a red flag that the agreement is a pay-for-delay. Although the numbers are small, publicly available materials on industry experience corroborate this conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impacts of weather and climate shocks on firm performance in Uganda, a low-income country that shares many characteristics with countries at similar levels of development. The analysis exploits panel methods on novel quarterly business climate data. The results are threefold. First, weather and climate shocks are negatively associated with business performance. Second, these effects are stronger among micro and small enterprises, and among firms in the agricultural and industrial sectors. Third, poor business environments characterized by excruciating constraints exacerbate the impact of climate shocks on business performance. The results are robust to alternative econometric model specifications.