This dissertation adds to the literature on international openness and economic growth by studying and quantifying the effects of openness to trade and multinational production using a model of endogenous innovation with firm heterogeneity. The first chapter discusses the contribution of this dissertation to the theoretical and empirical literature on international openness. The second chapter studies and quantifies the long-run effects of openness to trade and multinational production in the context of advanced economies using a model of endogenous innovation with firm heterogeneity. Counterfactual experiments conducted using a calibrated version of a theoretical model find that the US would experience a significant welfare cost in consumption terms by restricting openness to both trade and horizontal multinational production with other OECD countries, with the growth effect accounting for a substantial part of the cost. Chapter Three extends the theoretical model presented in Chapter Two to include features specific to the North-South context. I show that allowing for the possibility that the South may switch from being an imitator to becoming an innovator is essential for examining the long-run growth effect of stronger intellectual property rights. In particular, the North and the South both prefer stronger intellectual property rights because this will achieve the fastest long-run economic growth. If the South is an imitator country, the North needs to maintain its absolute advantage in technology creation by maintaining a sufficiently large pool of uncopied ideas. Otherwise both countries will fall into a slow-growth equilibrium in the long run. In Chapter Four, I account for transitional dynamics and study the gains from openness and stronger intellectual property rights that arise in the North-South context. Counterfactual experiments based on a calibrated version of the model presented in Chapter Three find that the transitional welfare gains from further trade openness between China and the OECD countries can be significant. In contrast to the existing growth literature, a deterrence of imitation has limited welfare effects when the South can switch from being an imitator to becoming an innovator country. This points to a source of potential bias in the welfare estimates provided by the existing literature. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2012-05-18 10:18:34.338

O objetivo desta tese é identificar a contribuição dos efeitos de aglomeração e do sorting espacial, associado às heterogeneidades não observadas dos trabalhadores e firmas, para a determinação dos salários individuais e dos salários locais nos arranjos populacionais do Brasil. Os dados do mercado de trabalho (RAIS-MTE) mostram que existe um diferencial espacial de salários, o qual pode ser explicado pelas distintas composições produtivas e de trabalhadores entre os locais e pelos diferenciais de custo de vida. A disponibilidade crescente de micro dados longitudinais permitiu a inclusão das habilidades não observadas individuais na equação de salários. Os estudos da Economia do Trabalho mostram que as habilidades são responsáveis por uma grande parcela dos diferenciais de salários. No entanto, os estudos nacionais ainda encontram um diferencial significativo, mesmo após o controle dos componentes individuais e do custo de vida, sugerindo a existência de efeitos específicos associados à localização das firmas e dos trabalhadores. A Economia Urbana considera as economias de aglomeração como um determinante salarial relevante nos mercados de trabalhos densos, particularmente a partir dos trabalhos de Glaeser e Maré (1994; 2001). Por sua vez, a maior produtividade das áreas densas pode ser atribuída à concentração de trabalhadores e firmas mais produtivos, o que ficou conhecido nessa literatura como sorting. Os estudos da Economia Urbana controlam somente o sorting dos atributos individuais não observados. Este trabalho contribui com a literatura ao considerar o sorting espacial dos atributos não observados das firmas e dos trabalhadores na determinação dos salários e dos efeitos de aglomeração. O estudo utiliza um modelo de decomposição salarial para lidar com múltiplos efeitos fixos no painel pareado de trabalhadores e firmas. Os efeitos puros da aglomeração (densidade) sobre os salários locais serão estimados em um modelo de dois estágios. O primeiro estágio estima uma equação salarial incluindo as características observadas dos trabalhadores e do emprego e os efeitos de localização, com um painel de micro dados da RAIS (2002-2014). O segundo estágio realiza a decomposição dos efeitos de localização em componentes associados às características locais dos arranjos e aos atributos não observados das firmas e dos trabalhadores. A estratégia de identificação propõe o controle dos efeitos fixos dos trabalhadores e firmas e o uso de variável instrumental para identificar os efeitos da aglomeração. Ademais, os dados de satélite sobre a luminosidade noturna são usados para estimar a proporção da área total dos arranjos habitada, a qual é utilizada para calcular a densidade. Os resultados mostraram que os efeitos do trabalhador foram mais relevantes do que os efeitos da firma para explicar a variação dos salários individuais e locais. O modelo principal, que utiliza o instrumento Bartik e a área iluminada, encontrou um efeito da densidade sobre os salários locais de 4,9%, o qual é superior ao lower bound da literatura prévia (3%). Os resultados sugerem que ignorar as limitações indicadas neste estudo pode levar a uma subestimação nas estimativas dos efeitos da densidade / The goal of this study is to identify the contribution of agglomeration effects and spatial sorting for the determination of individual and local wages in Brazilian urban agglomerations. Administrative records from the Ministry of Labor (RAIS-MTE) show a spatial differential in wages, which can be explained by the different productive structures and compositions of workers across cities, and by differentials in cost-of-living. The longitudinal microdata allowed the inclusion of unobserved individual skills in the wage equation. Studies in Labor Economics show that skills are responsible for a large portion of the wage differential. However, the available studies on Brazil still find a significant differential, even after controlling for the individual components and the cost of living. This suggests the existence of specific effects associated with the location of firms and workers. The literature on Urban Economics considers the economies of agglomeration as a relevant wage determinant in dense labor markets. The higher productivity of dense areas can be attributed to the concentration of more productive workers and firms more productive, which became known in this literature as sorting. Studies in Urban Economics only control the sorting of unobserved individual attributes. This dissertation contributes to the literature by considering the spatial sorting of unobserved attributes of firms and of workers in the determination of wages and of the effects of agglomeration. The study uses a wage decomposition model to deal with multiple fixed effects in a matched panel of workers and firms. The pure effects of agglomeration (density) on local wages are estimated in a two-stage model. The first stage estimates a wage equation including the observed characteristics of workers and firms and the effects of location, with a microdata panel of RAIS (2002-2014). The second stage decomposes the location effects into components associated to local characteristics and to unobserved attributes of firms and workers. The identification strategy involves controlling for fixed effects of workers and firms, and using an instrumental variable to identifying the effects of agglomeration. Satellite data on illumination are used to estimate the proportion of the overall area occupied with population and firms in each local labour markets. The results indicate that the worker effects are more relevant to explain wage variation than the firm\'s effects. The model of preference indicates a density effect on wages of 4.9%, much higher than the literature lower bound (3%). This suggests that ignoring the variables included in this study can lead to an underestimation of the effects of agglomeration

This dissertation consists of three independent essays which contribute to the literatures on International Trade and Political Economy. The first essay addresses questions related to the political economy of antidumping (AD). With the remarkable falling in tariff barriers that has characterized the post-World War II period, AD has become the most used non-tariff barrier (NTB).1 Studying the use of AD is thus of great importance, also because the restrictive effects of AD measures on trade can be sizable (see for instance Ruhl, 2014). Moreover, there is an increasing concern that AD has turned to be an industrial policy tool rather than a mean that governments can use to restore the “level-playing field” (Vandenbussche and Zanardi, 2008). This worry is in line with the findings presented in the first chapter of this dissertation, Bureaucrats or Politicians? Political Parties and Antidumping in the US, which shows that the adoption of ADmeasures in the US is heavily shaped by political parties’ interests. I focus on the voting behavior of the International Trade Commission (ITC), a US quasijudicial agency composed by six non-elected commissioners who are supposed to conduct (an important part of the) AD investigations in a fair and objective manner. Using a newly collected dataset containing all ITC commissioners’ votes on AD over the period 1980-2010, I show that political parties can affect the ITC voting behavior in two ways: by selecting ITC commissioners who have a similar stance on trade policy as their own (selection effect) and by influencing them while they are in office (pressure effect). While other studies have emphasised that Congress can put pressure on the ITC, the novelty of this work is to show that this pressure is party-specific. First, I show that Democratic-appointed commissioners are systematically more protectionist than Republican-appointed ones. This effect is sizable (the probability of voting in favor of AD is at least 8 percentage points higher for Democratic-appointed commissioners) and suggests that political parties can play an important role by influencing the choice of ITC commissioners who have a similar preferences on trade. This result is insensitive to several changes in the econometric specifications and to the use of different methodologies. Moreover, commissioners’ votes on AD depend on the trade policy interests of key senators (i.e. Trade subcommittee members) in the party they are associated to.2 In particular, whether (Democratic) Republican-appointed commissioners vote in favor of AD depends crucially on whether the petitioning industry is key (in terms of employment) in the states represented by leading (Democratic) Republican senators at the time. This result is robust to several checks also holds when controlling for any unobserved time-invariant characteristic of ITC commissioners (e.g. the state of origin) that could influence their votes on AD and be correlated with the pressure variables, i.e. when commissioner fixed effects are included in the specifications. In addition, the pressure effect can actually overcome the selection effect, making a Republican-appointed commissioner more protectionist than the average Democratic-appointed one. The second essay, Internationalization and Innovation of Firms: Evidence and Policy, analyzes the link between internationalization and innovation at the firm level.3 The evidence presented Chapter 2 shows that the degrees of involvement in internationalization and innovation activities are inextricably linked. However, the European policy context seems at odds with this evidence: trade-promotion and innovation-enhancing policies are largely unrelated and often carried out through various agencies (see EIM, 2010).4 Thus, understanding the interaction between internationalization and innovation can be crucial for policy makers, especially in a world which is increasingly characterized by global value chains.5 The interplay between internationalization and innovation is investigated in a unique, representative and cross-country comparable sample of manufacturing firms with at least ten employees (EFIGE), across seven European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, UK) for the year 2008. We find that firms in the sample at hand are quite active in both innovation and internationalization: 87% of firms devote resources to R&D projects, IT solutions, or patent/design/ trademark registrations, while 77% of our firms are active in international trade, cross-border outsourcing relations, or FDI. For modes of internationalization, there is a clear ranking of associated firm performance: FDI makers show the highest productivity, followed by outsourcers and traders. Innovation differences across modes are less clear cut. Moreover, defining internationalization (innovation) intensity as the number of internationalization (innovation) modes in which firms are involved, we show that firms with high innovation intensity tend also to show high internationalization intensity. Instrumenting innovation intensity by the share of firms that have benefitted from R&D financial incentives in a given (NACE 2 digits) industry-country pair and by the share of investment in R&D over the value added in the same industry-country pair, for the years 2002-2006, we are not able to find conclusive evidence of a causal effect of innovation on internationalization. Finally, a positive association between innovation and internationalization intensities appears at both firm level and country-industry (milieu) level, and at country level when average intensity is calculated disregarding the relative numbers of firms in the different industries. If country average intensities are computed weighting by firm numbers in the various industries, the correlation between innovation and internationalization intensities across countries appears weaker, suggesting that innovation matters more than internationalization for driving differences across countries. Based on the evidence we collected, we suggest a higher coordination/integration of internationalization and innovation policies at both the national and EU levels, and propose a bigger coordinating role for EU institutions, in order to reduce the current paradox of generally uncorrelated policies aimed at mostly correlated outcomes. The third essay, Cooperation Among Criminal Organizations: Evidence from Organized Crime in Italy, uncovers new facts about the behavior criminal organizations on the Italian territory. Since Becker (1968) the economic analysis of crime has especially focused on the behavior of individual offenders. Much less attention has been devoted to the activities of criminal organizations, especially from an empirical point of view. Nevertheless, organized crime is a prominent and alarming presence in the world economy: it destroys physical and human capital and deteriorates the business environment, ultimately lowering the growth potential of an economy (Acconcia et al. 2014; Pinotti, 2015). The third chapter of this dissertation contributes to the literature on economics of organized crime by shedding light on the interaction between domestic and foreign organizations in Italy, showing that the probability of cooperation among them depends both on the type of crime committed and on the presence of traditional (incumbent) organizations in some regions of the country. More specifically, cooperation between domestic and foreign criminal organizations is studied using a novel dataset containing information on their activities in the Italian territory during 2007-2010. Italian territory during 2007-2010. We first show that cooperation among Italians and foreigners is skewed towards specific crimes (e.g. counterfeiting activities). We then show that the presence of traditional (incumbent) organizations in some regions reduces the probability of cooperating. Interestingly, in these areas the same probability is higher when cooperation takes place for criminal activities in which foreign organizations can play an important role in providing inputs. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<div>This dissertation consists of three chapters about the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). All chapters contributes to the scarce but recently great developing literature on installation and firm-level studies in the EU ETS. The first chapter evaluates the policy effectiveness and efficiency by theoretical modelling and</div><div>empirical assessment of firms’ emission abatement activities. The second chapter overviews the global emission trading market, documents the institutional background</div><div>of emission trading, and analyzes firms’ emission trading patterns in light of the broader empirical literature. The last chapter studies productivity and firms’ emission</div><div>permit trading behaviors by considering a complete set of options. In the first chapter, I investigate how firms reduce emissions under continuous adjustment of the policy by using the implementation of the three phases of EU ETS</div><div>as a cost shock. I develop a model of emission abatement with heterogeneous firms by introducing two channels: Reallocation and Investment which incur variable and</div><div>fixed abatement costs respectively. More productive firms are cleaner as they put more effort on Investment. However, the policy effect is ambiguous driven by the magnitude</div><div>and correlation of the proposed abatement technology parameters, which highlights the importance of the current abatement technology for firms’ responses to climate</div><div>policy. I then empirically test the model by using a novel dataset that matches firms’ financial, production and emission data. In addition to providing the elasticity of</div><div>emission intensity, the elasticity of Reallocation and Investment, the model enabled me to estimate the firm’s abatement technology parameters and decompose the emissions into the proposed two channels. The results indicate that firms have a higher efficiency on abatement in utilizing of inputs than green technology investment. The emission change is primarily driven by the channel of Reallocation and is concentrated in non-metallic</div><div>mineral companies. The green innovation is limited under the policy with a small emission intensity decrease even though there is large emission reductions. The second chapter reviews the global rise of emission trading, documents the institutional background of emission trading, and summarizes firms’ emission trading patterns. To the best of my knowledge, this study is one of the first to empirically analyze the trading behaviors of all ETS firms covering all three phases in the EU ETS. I use two micro-level datasets to investigate the permit trading behaviors of all types of trading in the market, including international offset permits. Some explanations of the identified trading patterns are provided in this paper. Additionally, this study also discusses the patterns in light of the broader empirical literature. The last chapter contributes to the literature on the firms’ permit trading behaviors. The development of the EU ETS has complicated firms’ decisions around carbon trading and offered firms more options to offset emissions. We provide a first look at the determinants behind firms’ participation in the EU ETS as well as their trading behaviors by considering a complete portfolio of permit trade markets</div><div>in the EU ETS. Based on a comprehensive permit transaction dataset linked with individual level firm’s characteristics, we quantitatively analyze firms’ participation</div><div>decisions and trading patterns. We focus on the impact of firms’ productivity, endowment position, and endowment value on market choice and trading amount. Our</div><div>results suggest that productive firms are more likely to participate in permits trading and to purchase the permits in the secondary and international markets. Conditional</div><div>on firms’ market choice, the permit trading amount is also correlated with a firm’s productivity and endowment value. In addition, firms in power and energy sector are</div><div>more likely to participate in permit trading than other manufacturing firms. Overall, the empirical results indicate that less productive firms have disadvantages competing</div><div>in the permit trade market.</div>

This dissertation consists of three essays on firm finances and macroeconomics. In Chapter 1, I empirically investigate the relationship between firms' financial positions and asset tangibility by drawing on a CRSP/Compustat merged dataset of US public firms from 1987 to 2016. Intangible capital has grown in importance as the US economy has evolved towards service-based and technology-based industries with a decline in the physical capital share. Intangible capital spending is a type of capital expenditure that is not negligible compared to physical capital investment. The key finding of my empirical exercise is that industries and firms with lower average asset tangibility have lower average debt-to-sales ratios and higher average values of distance-to-default both in the long run and short run. Asset tangibility is a proxy for the recovery rate of capital since intangible capital is considered less valuable collateral, so the empirical evidence suggests that the recovery rate of capital is related to borrowing and default. Chapter 2 structurally estimates the recovery rate of capital, which is difficult to observe in the data, and quantitatively analyzes the aggregate implications of the empirical findings in the previous chapter. The recovery rate of capital determines lenders' credit supply and affects the demand and total credit amounts in equilibrium. Recent rising intangibles in the US may reduce recovery. I build a canonical quantitative general equilibrium heterogeneous firm model with risky debt, capital accumulation, and default. I estimate the model parameters by matching the covariance matrix of profit, investment, and debt, the average spread, and the average default rate in my data sample. The simulated method of moments (SMM) estimate of the recovery rate is 74% when targeting moments constructed with only physical capital. The counterfactuals reveal that declines in the recovery rate reduce aggregate output, credit, and welfare by constraining capital accumulation. Tackling intangibles by a broader notion of capital, I estimate a recovery rate of 46% with the same model structure, implying that rising intangibles could cause nontrivial output and welfare losses due to financial frictions. Chapter 3 examines the causal effect of immigration on local entrepreneurship in US counties. I use the immigration shock constructed in Burchardi et al. (2020) as an instrumental variable to predict the total number of migrants flowing into each US county from 1990 to 2010. I use the entrepreneurship indices from the Startup Cartography Project (Andrews et al., 2020) to measure the quantity and quality of US start-ups at the county-level. First, I find a strong and significant causal impact of immigration on the number of new business registrants per person. Second, I find a significant causal impact of immigration on the expected number of start-ups with growth per person. I also show that the influx of immigrants can increase the local average wage per capita. To interpret these empirical findings, I build a model of entrepreneurship which implies that if immigration shifts the distribution of entrepreneurial acumen to the right, it increases the wage rate, the fraction of entrepreneurs, and the mean quality of entrepreneurs. These results suggest that immigration is an essential driver of economic dynamism via entrepreneurship.

Zusammenfassung Die Dissertation behandelt die Thematik der Unternehmensheterogenität. Die Arbeit besteht aus einem theoretischen und einem empirischen Teil. Im theoretischen Teil wird untersucht, wie sich Asymmetrien auf der Ebene der Konsumenten auf das Unternehmensverhalten auswirken. Im empirischen Teil wird die Frage behandelt, in welchem Maße die Performance von Firmen innerhalb der gleichen Industrie differiert. Kapitel 1 führt in die Literatur zur Unternehmensheterogenität ein. Kapitel 2 gibt einen Überblick über die aktuelle Literatur zu den Modellen der Horizontalen Produktdifferenzierung. In Kapitel 3 wird das Hotelling-Duopolmodell nach d'Aspremont, Gabszewicz und Thisse (1979) in Bezug auf die Anzahl der Spieler generalisiert. Es kann gezeigt werden, dass die Anzahl der Spieler einen Einfluss auf das Niveau der Differenzierung besitzt. Das Prinzip der Maximalen Differenzierung im Duopol verliert seine Gültigkeit für den Oligopolfall. In Kapitel 4 wird das Investitionsverhalten in neue Distributionstechnologien in Märkten mit Wechselkosten der Konsumenten mit Hilfe eines Realoptionsmodells analysiert. Kapitel 5 umfasst den empirischen Teil der Arbeit. Hier wird statistisch untersucht, ob innerhalb der Industrien Firmen langfristig eine ähnliche Performance aufweisen (Performancegruppen) und welchen Anteil der Varianz der Firmen durch diese gruppierten Unternehmen erklärt wird. Schlagwörter: Firmenheterogenität, Horizontale Produktdifferenzierung, Realoptionen, Wechselkosten, Strategische Gruppen / Abstract The dissertation considers the heterogenity of firms. It consists of a theoretical and an empirical part. In the theoretical part it is examined to what extent asymmetries between customers have an impact on firm behavior. In the empirical part, the author analyzes the level of heterogeneity of firm performance within industries. Chapter 1 introduces the reader into the topic of firm heterogeneity. Chapter 2 provides an overview over the recent literature on horizontal product differentiation. In Chapter 3 the Hotelling duopoly model à la d'Aspremont, Gabszewicz and Thisse (1979) is generalized with respect to the number of firms. It is shown that the number of firms has an impact on the level of product differentiation. The Principle of Maximum Differentiation valid for the duopoly does not hold for the oligoply case. In Chapter 4, the optimal investment in a new distribution technology in markets with consumer switching costs is investigated using a real option model. Chapter 5 corresponds to the empirical part of the dissertation. It is studied if there are firms within industries with a similar long-run performance (performance groups) and how much of the total variance of the firm profits are explained by these firm groups. Key words: firm heterogeneity, horizontal product differentiation, real options, switching costs, strategic groups

This doctoral dissertation studies the effect of economic integration on the performance of firms. The ongoing process of global economic integration has been characterized by dismantling of trade barriers and openness to foreign direct investments (FDI). These changes have not only brought opportunities to firms in terms of market access and the possibility to learn about foreign technologies brought in by foreign counterparts. The new economic environment has also posed new challenges through a greater competitive pressure urging firms to continuously align their production patterns to more efficient business practices. The agility of firms to adjust to external shocks, and hence the potential of countries to benefit from economic integration, does presumably not only depend on the internal assets of firms but may also be influenced by government policies and national institutional settings. This conceptual background constitutes the storyline of the doctoral dissertation.<p><p>Chapter 1 of the dissertation is a step forward in understanding the externalities of foreign direct investments on the economic performance of domestic firms. During the late eighties and early nineties, Spain saw an upswing in foreign direct investments that placed the economic at the top of FDI recipients in Europe. To provide fresh insights into the firm-levels responses to FDI, Chapter 1 investigates the effects of foreign direct investment on the productivity of domestic firms within the same sector of activity as foreign firms, and whether FDI externalities differed depending on their level of technology. The empirical results show that foreign presence had an overall positive effect on the productivity growth of domestic firms. The gains were not, however, evenly distributed across firms. Firms closer to the frontier benefited more from FDI than firms far from the technology frontier. <p><p>A further integration of the world economy with new economic actors, like China and India, has highlighted the need for European firms to climb the quality ladder and shift towards high value added products and greater flexibility in delivering new products in order to survive new competitive threats. Chapter 2 is a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of innovation for the export activities of firms. The intuition is that firms through innovation enhance their access to foreign markets by improving cost competitiveness and the quality of products. The Chapter builds on previous literature to develop a trade model in which firms differ in their propensity to innovate and export based on their underlying productivity. The empirical results, in line with the theoretical model, suggest a positive effect of innovation on the probability of participation in export markets.<p><p>The innovative activities of firms may not only depend on their internal assets, but presumably also on their relations with other actors in the national innovation systems. To understand better the role of firms’ relations with the science sector, Chapter 3 turns to one of the major producers of knowledge –universities- and investigates the factors that contribute to the successful transfer of knowledge from universities to the market. The results from Chapter 3 show that universities with established technology transfer policies, procedures, and large and experienced technology transfer offices perform better. <p><p>Previous chapters demonstrate that innovation gives a competitive edge to firms exploring foreign markets. Chapter 4, which is joint work with economists from France’s central bank, investigates how credit market imperfections affect the expansion and survival of firms in foreign markets, which is essential for the design of policies stimulating aggregate trade and competitiveness. Chapter 4 develops a theoretical model to study the impact of credit constraints on the number of newly served export destinations by firms and their exits from the export market and tests it using French firm-level data. The results show that credit constraints negatively affect the number of newly created export relations and have a negative effect on the probability of exit from the export market.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Diese Dissertation besteht aus drei Aufsätzen, die die Rolle unterschiedlichester Arten von finanziellen Friktionen sowohl auf Firmenseite, als auch auf Bankenseite, für die Übertragung von finanziellen Schocks und Geldpolitik analysieren. Im ersten Aufsatz, "Firm Heterogeneity and the Capital Market", studiere ich welche Art von Finanzbeschränkungen der Firmen für die Übertragung von Kapitalmarktfinanzierungsschocks, als auch geldpolitischen Schocks, ausschlaggebend sind. Hierbei gehöre ich zu den Ersten in der Literatur, die Kapitalmarktfinanzierungsschocks direkt aus Firmendaten schätzen. Ich zeige in meiner Studie, dass es für ein tieferes Verständnis von Firmeninvestitionen entscheidend ist, zwischen verschiedenen potentiellen Maßzahlen für Finanzbeschränkungen der Firmen zu unterscheiden. Konkret zeige ich, dass finanzbeschränkte Firmen mit hohen erwarteten zukünftigen Gewinnen nach einem Kapitalmarktfinanzierungsschock ihre Investitionen stärker als andere Firmen erhöhen. Im Unterschied dazu, spielt für die Übertragung von Geldpolitik auf Firmeninvestitionen die Liquidität und die Verschuldungsquote eine stärkere Rolle. Diese Resultate implizieren, dass für Politikmaßnahmen die eine Erhöhung von gesamtwirtschaftlichen Investitionen zum Ziel haben, sowohl Geldpolitik als auch der Zugang zum Kapitalmarkt im Blick behalten werden muss. Der zweite Aufsatz, "The Macroeconomic Effects of a European Deposit (Re-)Insurance Scheme", wurde gemeinsam mit Marius Clemens und Stefan Gebauer geschrieben. Hier analysieren wir die Wohlfahrts- und Stabilisierungseffekte einer europäischen Einlagenrückversicherung. Unser Regime-Switching-Zwei-Länder-DSGE-Modell impliziert, dass eine europäischer Einlagenrückversicherungsfond Konjunkturschwankungen in beiden Ländern gut ausgleichen kann und die Risikoteilung zwischen beiden Ländern verbessert. Allerdings kann das Wirtschaftswachstum langfristig leiden, wenn die Einzahlungen der Banken in den jeweiligen Ländern in die europäische Einlagenversicherung schlecht gelöst sind. Im dritten Aufsatz, "The Financial Accelerator, Wages and Optimal Monetary Policy", analysiere ich in einem makroökonomischen Modell, welche Rolle Geldpolitik einnehmen sollte, wenn Friktionen auf der Bankenseite und Lohnrigiditäten existieren. Ich zeige, dass Zentralbanken im Fall von Finanzmarktschocks einen großen Fokus auf die Stabilisierung von Lohninflation legen sollten. Dies erklärt sich über die geringere Sensitivität von Kapitalnachfrage auf Änderungen in Reallöhnen im Falle von Friktionen auf dem Bankenmarkt. Höhere Reallöhne führen zudem zu Inflation und einem niedrigeren Risikoaufschlag auf Firmenkredite. / This thesis consists of three essays that focus on the role of heterogeneity in both the type and the degree of financial frictions for the pass-through of financial shocks and of monetary policy. In the first essay, "Firm Heterogeneity and the Capital Market", I investigate the importance of firms' financial constraints for the transmission of both equity shocks and monetary policy shocks. I am the first in the literature to obtain an instrument to equity financing shocks directly from firm-level data. I show in my study, that it is necessary to strictly distinguish between different forms of financial constraints if researchers want to investigate the role of firm heterogeneity on firm investment rates. In particular, financially constrained firms with high expected future profits increase their investment rate relatively more when capital market funding conditions are improved. In contrast, firm liquidity and high debt burden of firms explain the heterogeneity in firms' investment response to monetary policy. Therefore, policy makers have to consider both monetary policy conditions and access of firms to capital markets in order to relax the firms' financial constraints and to stimulate investment. The second essay, "The Macroeconomic Effects of a European Deposit (Re-) Insurance Scheme", is joint work with Marius Clemens and Stefan Gebauer. We analyze the stabilization effects of a common European deposit re-insurance scheme. To this end we build a two-country regime-switching general equilibrium model. The findings suggest that a common European deposit insurance scheme reduces business cycle fluctuations in both countries and improve risk sharing within the union. Long term macroeconomic performance however can deteriorate when contributions to the deposit insurance are non-deductible and designed poorly. In the third essay, "The Financial Accelerator, Wages and Optimal Monetary Policy", I investigate optimal monetary policy under the existence of both banking frictions and wage rigidities. In my macroeconomic model, I document that after the economy is hit by adverse financial shocks, monetary policy should stabilize wage inflation to improve welfare. This result can be explained as follows: The presence of financial frictions makes capital demand less elastic to changes in real wages. The wage-inflation stabilization regime that results in relatively higher real wages reduces the capital demand by less in comparison to the non-financial-friction economy. Higher real wages increase inflation and lowers the credit spread.

Notre travail se penche sur le financement de la formation professionnelle continue tel qu'il a été négocié par les partenaires sociaux dans les pays européens post-fordistes. A travers une approche des associations patronales centrée sur la distribution inégale des ressources entre grandes firmes et PME, nous montrons que l'émergence d'une gestion corporatiste (les fonds de mutualisation) peut s'interpréter comme le résultat d'alliances inter-classes entre les syndicats, les associations patronales et les PME, contre les grandes entreprises. Bien que nous mobilisions un corpus centré sur les employeurs à l’image de ce que fait l'approche en termes de Variétés du Capitalisme (VoC – Hall et Soskice, 2001), la thèse soutenue est plus proche de l’institutionnalisme historique de l'Ecole française de la Régulation. En effet, l'attention accordée à l'hétérogénéité des firmes et au rôle du politique est difficilement compatible avec l’institutionnalisme rationnel de la VoC et sa conception des associations patronales comme simples outils de coordination des firmes / Our work tackles the issue of the financing of the continuous vocational training as it has been negotiated by social partners in the post-fordist European countries. The reflection is centered on the unequal distribution of resources among the large and small firms affiliated to employer associations. It is shown that the emergence of a corporatist governance (the training funds) can be interpreted as the result of cross-class coalitions between trade unions, employer association and SMEs, against big companies. Although we mobilize a theoretical corpus centered on employers as the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ approach does (VoC – Hall and Soskice, 2001), our dissertation is closer to the historical institutionalism of the French Régulation School. Indeed, the attention granted to the firms’ heterogeneity and to the role of politics is hardly compatible with the VoC rational institutionalism and its conception of employer organizations as mere employer coordination instruments.

La présente thèse contribue à la littérature en économie internationale en s'intéressant à l'impact des lieux commerciaux et des réformes structurelles sur la croissance de la productivité agrégée dans le secteur manufacturier en Europe et en Inde. Dans le premier chapitre co-écrit avec Antoine Berthou, Jong-Chung Chung et Kalina Manova, nous montrons que l'expansion des exportations et des importations stimule la productivité du travail, mais seule la demande à l’exportation réalloue l'activité vers les entreprises plus productives en présence de distorsions de prix. De plus, les frictions liées aux imperfections de marché et la mauvaise qualité des institutions freinent la capacité des économies à réagir aux chocs de commerce subis par les entreprises nationales. Dans le second chapitre, je trouve que l'augmentation des importations d'intrants intermédiaires depuis la Chine contribue de manière significative à la croissance agrégée de la PTF en France grâce à une plus grande efficacité de répartition des parts de marché entre les entreprises. En effet, permettre à un plus grand nombre d'entreprises d'avoir accès à des biens intermédiaires au meilleur rapport qualité-prix stimule la croissance de la productivité agrégée. Dans le troisième chapitre co-écrit avec Adil Mohommad et Piyaporn Sodsriwiboon, nous montrons que des réformes favorisant davantage de flexibilité sur le marché du travail et une meilleure allocation des crédits entre entreprises réduisent les distorsions de marché payées par les entreprises et génèrent des gains de productivité et une croissance économique plus forte à long terme en Inde. / In this dissertation, I contribute to the literature on international economics by drawing attention to the impact of trade flows and structural reforms on productivity growth in the manufacturing sector in Europe and India. ln the first chapter co-authored, with Antoine Berthou, Jong-Chung Chung and Kalina Manova, we demonstrate that growth in exports and imports boosts labor productivity, but only export demand reallocates activity toward more productive firms in presence of price distortions. Moreover, market and institutional frictions dampen the ability of economies to react and gain from trade shocks. ln the second chapter, I show that the increase in Chinese imports of intermediate inputs is a significant driver of aggregate TFP growth in France as it increases efficiency in sharing market shares between firms. Allowing more firms to access intermediate goods at the best price-quality ratio stimulates aggregate productivity growth. ln the third chapter, co-written with Adil Mohommad and Piyapom Sodsriwiboon, our finding suggests that removing structural rigidities in the labor market and improving credit allocation would reduce distortions and contribute to productivity gains and long term growth in India.