Suchergebnisse

This paper investigates how enforcement of labor regulation affects the firm's use of informal labor and firm performance. Using firm level data on informal employment and firm performance, and administrative data on enforcement of regulation at the city level, we show that in areas where law enforcement is stricter firms employ a smaller amount of informal employment. Furthermore, by reducing the firm's access to unregulated labor, stricter enforcement is also associated with lower labor productivity. We control for different regional and firm characteristics, and we instrument enforcement with a measure of the access of labor inspectors to firms. Taken together, our findings suggest that increased access to labor flexibility significantly improves firm performance.

This paper examines international technology transfers using firm-level data across 43 developing countries. Our findings show that exporting and importing activities are important channels for the transfer of technology. Majority foreign-owned firms are less likely to engage in technological innovations than minority foreign-owned firms or domestic firms. We interpret this finding as evidence that the technology transferred from multinational parents to majority-owned subsidiaries is more mature than that transferred to minority-owned subsidiaries. Our findings also suggest that foreign-owned subsidiaries rely mostly on the direct transfer of technology from their parents and that firms that import intermediate inputs are more likely to acquire new technology from their machinery suppliers.

Numa altura em que a Europa ameaça fragmentar-se e o fracasso do projecto europeu aparece como uma possibilidade, questiona-se sobre se a União Europeia terá ainda alguma coisa a oferecer ante a suposta inexistência de alternativas ou poderá, ao invés, 'renascer das cinzas', tal imagem de Fénix renascida da mitologia grega. Com o presente texto propomo-nos chamar a atenção para dados aspectos essenciais em torno da problemática em apreço e lançar alguns argumentos para o debate sobre a Europa, a democracia e a cidadania europeia, bem como sobre a aproximação dos cidadãos às instituições da União.http://dx.doi.org/10.14195/1647-6336_13_11