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This paper examines the relationship between mobile internet, employment and structural transformation in Rwanda. Thanks to its ability to enable access to a wide range of ICT technologies, internet coverage has the potential to affect the dynamics and the composition of employment significantly. To demonstrate this, we have combined GSMA network coverage maps with individual-level information from national population censuses and labour force surveys, creating a district-level dataset of Rwanda that covers the 2002 to 2019 period. Our results show that an increase in mobile internet coverage affects the labour market in two ways. First, by increasing employment opportunities. Second, by contributing to changes in the composition of the labour market. Education, migration and shifts in demand are all instrumental in explaining our findings.

We report a hitherto undocumented causal mechanism of how patent protection affects exports. The empirical analysis leverages unique data on the worldwide patenting and exporting activities at the product level for the universe of French firms. Exploiting heterogeneity of patent coverage within firm-product-country destinations, we find evidence of a patent premium. Goods protected by patents in a destination country are associated with higher export quantities, ceteris paribus. The effect ranges between four and eleven percent. The causality of the finding is confirmed using rejected patent applications, which are exogenous to the firm. Exports collapse when firms lose patent protection.

The paper provides novel evidence on the heterogeneous response of exporting firms to exchange rate movements. Italian firm-level trade data by product and destination indeed unveil that adjustments to exchange rate variation substantially differ across export modes. The estimates show that, in the event of a domestic currency appreciation, export intermediaries react by decreasing more their price – and less their export volume – than direct manufacturing exporters; and that the different response of direct exporters and wholesale firms is not driven by firm heterogeneity in size or productivity. By examining the aggregate implications of such micro-level findings, the paper documents that, following an appreciation, aggregate bilateral exports routed through wholesale firms tend to decline by less than total direct exports. Overall, our results suggest that, in addition to facilitating trade, export intermediation may substantially contribute to stabilizing trade patterns across countries.

This paper investigates the change in worker flows (i.e. net growth, but also hiring and separation rates) around an investment in automation-intensive goods and, within firms, across occupational categories. Resorting to an integrated dataset encompassing detailed information on firms, their imports, and employer-employee data for French manufacturing employers over the period 2002–2015, we identify ‘automation spikes’ using imports of capital goods embedding automation technologies. Even after controlling for firms’ non-random selection into automation, we find that automation spikes are linked to an increase in firms’ contemporaneous net employment growth rate, jointly explained by a higher hiring rate and a lower separation rate. Furthermore, we find that automation spikes are not associated with significant changes in the composition of the workforce (in terms of 1-digit and 2-digit occupational categories, and routine-intensive vs. non routine-intensive jobs).

This work investigates how the export status of the firm influences the patterns of employment growth at different age classes. We address this research question resorting to a novel set of data that links together the universe of Italian firms and detailed data on export transactions. We find that the positive relationship between export status and growth declines with firm age. Further, we also find that, even when accounting for the role of age, the negative size-growth relationship does not disappear, contrary to some recent evidence. These results suggest a positive signaling role of the export status that is stronger for young exporters or born globals. Exploiting the product-country level dimension of the customs data, we also provide, for the first time, evidence on differences in exchange rates pass-through between young and experienced exporters. In particular, we find that early exporters appear to be better equipped than established firms to face exchange rates variations as their exports decrease less following a currency appreciation.

This work investigates the relationship between proxies of innovation activities, such as patents and trademarks, and firm performance in terms of revenues, growth, and profitability. By resorting to the virtual universe of Italian manufacturing and service firms, this work provides a rather complete picture of the Intellectual Property (IP) strategies pursued by Italian firms, in terms of patents and trademarks, and studies whether the two instruments for protecting IP exhibit complementarity or substitutability. In addition, and to our knowledge novel, we propose a measure of concordance (or proximity) between the patents and trademarks owned by the same firm and we then investigate whether such concordance exerts any effect on performance. The results suggest that while patents and trademarks independently exert a relevant impact on firm performance, there is no convincing evidence in favour of a complementary role of IP.

Questo breve contributo cerca di fornire una prospettiva utile per interpretare quali possano essere, anche oltre il breve periodo, gli effetti di un prolungato lockdown sull’economia italiana, tenendo in considerazione le particolari caratteristiche della struttura industriale del nostro paese. Al momento, l’evoluzione epidemiologica del virus, nonostante gli sforzi per controllarla, pare ancora incerta ed è arduo tentare di stimare la durata esatta tanto del lockdown quanto delle varie fasi di ripartenza. Inoltre, la chiusura temporanea di numerose attività produttive provoca, come effetto collaterale, l’interruzione del normale funzionamento dei canali istituzionali per la raccolta dei dati, fatto che causa a sua volta un ritardo nella disponibilità delle stime dell’impatto economico di Covid-19 sulle economie dei paesi, (a dire il vero quasi tutti) interessati dalla pandemia.