The academic society have in the recent past addressed the current ecosystem for new and existing business as a knowledge society. An era of globalisation and advanced technologies, where tacit knowledge has become an essential commodity for all firms in all industries looking to maintain a competitive level of productivity. Consequently, a substantial number of young companies are emerging worldwide with an exogenous approach of receiving knowledge as input in their process of being innovative. They leverage externalities rather than internal research and development. A suggested way of doing this is by utilising the natural advantages and values of an area, often remote from their country of residence. In this study, we suggest that this seeking of regions dense in innovative activity gives rise to young companies performing of international operations. We presume that business is becoming increasingly borderless, and assume the perspective of companies with innate international ambitions, born global firms. We suggest that the reason for early international activity varies from seeking new foreign markets to merely gaining from the input of outside expertise in offshore areas, dense in innovative activities. Following, we use the case of a local third-party association, namely the Nordic Innovation House in Silicon Valley to partly study why and how firms leverage values in the area and further the role of the association. This is done in the context of streamlining innovative and international activity. Findings verify that seeking knowledge as input in the process of innovation is a driving force to international activities. Allowing for interesting connections between previously separated concepts. Furthermore, we account for how a firm leverages the natural advantages and values of an spatially defined area. Finally, we confirm that being able to connect with the right people and gaining relevant knowledge is done with considerably more ease and to a significantly lower cost with the help of a third-party association. Consequently, the firms exhibited accelerated and more efficient processes of innovation and internationalisation.

A década de oitenta, no Brasil, foi marcada por crises sucessivas da dívida externa, problemas inflacionários e baixas taxas de crescimento. Neste cenário, surgem idéias favoráveis à abertura da economia e em especial quanto ao Investimento Direto Estrangeiro (IDE), como forma se superar a restrição externa e possibilitar a retomada do crescimento econômico. Entretanto, também existiam justificativas de cunho mais microeconômico. Acreditava-se que as Empresas Nacionais (EN) sofreriam um choque de competitividade ao disputarem mercados com produtos importados de melhor qualidade e principalmente com o ingresso de Empresas Multinacionais (EMN) mais modernas e eficientes. Conseqüentemente, as EN iriam aumentar sua produtividade através do chamado efeito de transbordamento. As EMN, por serem muito eficientes, detentoras e desenvolvedoras de altas tecnologias de produção e técnicas de gestão modernas acabariam causando, de alguma forma, externalidades positivas às EN. Este fato teria como conseqüência o aumento da produtividade das EN. Neste contexto, o Brasil toma diversas medidas que favorecem o ingresso do IDE e a partir de meados da década de noventa passa a receber uma enorme quantidade deste capital, atingindo seu ápice no ano 2000. Entretanto, no início desta década o fluxo do IDE no Mundo e no Brasil apresentaram forte queda. Em 2003, o IDE retomou uma trajetória crescente mundial e o Brasil tem se destacado novamente na recepção deste tipo de capital. Este trabalho analisa os esforços de mensuração dos efeitos de transbordamentos do IDE sobre a produtividade das EN no Brasil. A análise toma por base as interpretações teóricas e empíricas sobre o tema no mundo e no Brasil. A despeito da identificação de alguns efeitos de transbordamentos positivos, ressaltam-se que as medidas tomadas em favor do IDE preocuparam-se basicamente em atraí-lo ao país. Neste sentido, fazemos uma discussão de proposições de políticas públicas e ações institucionais para potencializar as externalidades positivas do IDE sobre as EN no Brasil. / The eighteen decade, in Brazil, was marked by successive external debits crisis, inflationary problems and low rates of growth. In this scenario, thoughts favorable to openness of the economy emerge, in especial related to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), as a way of overcome the external restriction and make possible the return of the economic growth. However, there were justifications more related to microeconomics matters. It used to believe that Nationals Enterprises (NE) would suffer a competitive shock by fight for market-share with imported products of better quality and mainly with the ingress of Multinationals Enterprises (ME), more modern and efficient. Consequently, the NE would increase their productivity through the spillover effects. The ME, as a consequence of being very efficiencies, owner and developer of high of production technologies and modern manager techniques, would cause by some how positive externalities to the NE. This fact would result in the increase of productivity of the NE. In this context, Brazil took several steps to facilitate the ingress of FDI and since middles of the nineties decades started to receive a huge amount of the capital, heating its top in the year 2000. Nevertheless, at the beginning of this decade the flux of FDI in the World and in Brazil had a strong drop. In 2003, the FDI retook a growing trajectory worldly and Brazil has been outstanding again in the reception of this type of capital. This work analyses the efforts of measurement of the spillover effects of FDI in the productivities of NE in Brazil. The analysis takes in account the theoretical and empirical interpretations about the theme in the world and in Brazil. In spite of the identification of some positives spillover effects, we highlight that the measures took in favor to the FDI were basically worried in attract it to the country. In this sense, we discuss propositions of public politics and institutional actions to potentize FDI’s positives externalities over the NE in Brazil.

The objective of this study is to identify knowledge spillovers that spread across regions in Europe and vary in magnitude for different industries. The study uses a panel of 203 NUTS-2 regions covering the 15 pre-2004 EU-member-states to estimate the impact over the period 1998-2003, and distinguish between five major industries. The study implements a fixed effects panel data regression model with spatial autocorrelation to estimate effects using patent applications as a measure of R&D output to capture the contribution of R&D (direct and spilled-over) to regional productivity at the industry level. The results suggest that interregional knowledge spillovers and their productivity effects are to a substantial degree geographically localised and this finding is consistent with the localisation hypothesis of knowledge spillovers. There is a substantial amount of heterogeneity across industries with evidence that two industries (electronics, and chemical industries) produce interregional knowledge spillovers that have positive and highly significant productivity effects. The study, moreover, confirms the importance of spatial autoregressive disturbance in the fixed effects model for measuring the TFP impact of interregional knowledge spillovers at the industry level. (authors' abstract)

Chapter 1 Summary of the Dissertation "We are in the golden age of fraud." Jim Chanos, Kynikos Associates, Financial Times 24/07/2020. Beyond the speculations about the consecutive waves of Covid, 2020 will be reminded for one of the most notorious failures of a listed firm, due to a massive accounting fraud: the German payment fintech Wirecard. The firm, with 30 subsidiaries in 26 countries, joined the prestigious DAX index just two years before. The spillovers of the billion-euro fraud range from the arrest of top managers to suspicion of auditors, politicians, and regulatory authorities (BaFin, European Commission, and ESMA), as suggested the Financial Times headline "Why was Frankfurt so blind for so long?"1 Such a failure serves as a reminder of the relevance of financial markets regulation, oversight, and enforcement, in order to protect investors and to encourage compliance with regulations. Research on the relationship between the publication of financial misconducts and financial performance for corporates has continuously grown, as illustrated by the recent in- depth literature reviews undergone by Amiram et al. (2018) and Liu and Yawson (2020). It is fueling regulatory debates on how to enforce more efficiently financial regulations. Some specificities of white-collar crimes must be accounted for...

In this research, our main goal rests in the analysis of the main determinants and the features of output performance of firms. First, we will investigate the direct and the indirect effects (spillovers) of Research and Development (R&D) investments on firms’ total factor productivity growth. To that end, we begin by estimating the returns to R&D by using international micro level data, as first proposed in Griliches (1979). We quantify the effects on firms’ productivity of exogenous variations in the state of technology and of the R&D of other firms (R&D spillovers, Jaffe, 1986). Second, we will try to take into account the firms’ ability to identify, assimilate and exploit existing information, that is their absorptive capacity (Cohen, Levinthal 1989). We assume that the elasticity of output (or value added) to national or foreign stock of spillovers depend on the chosen measure of Absorptive Capacity, which generally is represented by own R&D capital. The positive effect of the interaction between own R&D capital and the spillover pool term indicates the firm ability to absorb new ideas from outside, while its negative effect gives evidence of necessity to invest more in own R&D. Third, we will explore the question whether geographic and technological proximities affect the knowledge flows, proxied by patent citations for large international firms and how these effects change over time. We expect that the geographical proximity impact on knowledge flows is decreasing over time, since information travels at lower communication costs over time (Coyle, 1997 and Friedman, 2005). Yet, according to Evans and Harringan (2005), distance is still relevant in some technological sectors, where face-to-face interaction is fundamental and knowledge is tacit and hard to codify. Then, it is also interesting to analyse the impact of technological proximity on knowledge flows over time. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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<p>  </p> <p>This dissertation is composed of three independent chapters in the field of the economic geography and international trade. However, there is one uniting theme between all three chapters: geographic spillovers. In each chapter, a source of geographic spillovers that is relevant to policymakers is investigated. Further, each chapter addresses a theoretical or data-driven challenge to identifying these spillovers and implements an improved methodology for estimation. In particular, the first chapter studies agglomeration and congestion spillovers, the impact of employment density on the productivity of workers and the amenities associated with living in a location, respectively, by using variation from a natural experiment. The second chapter studies fiscal multipliers, the effect of government spending on economic activity, by using variation from the same natural experiment. Finally, the third chapter studies import spillovers, the impact of neighboring firms' experience sourcing from foreign markets on the likelihood that firms in the same location and industry enter into those same markets, by using detailed data on Serbian firms.</p> <p><br></p> <p>In the first chapter, <em>Agglomeration and Congestion Spillovers: Evidence from Base Realignment and Closure</em>, I quantify agglomeration and congestion spillovers using variation from a natural experiment by instrumenting for changes in local employment with proposed changes to civilian employment at military installations through the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process. I find an agglomeration spillover elasticity consistent with the existing literature. However, my estimate of the congestion spillover elasticity is smaller in magnitude than common parameterizations of quantitative economic geography models. All else equal, with a weaker congestion spillover elasticity, more of the distribution of economic activity across space is due to natural advantages and disadvantages. This result implies smaller gains from implementing the optimal spatial policy. </p> <p><br></p> <p>In the second chapter, <em>Local Fiscal Multipliers and Defense Spending</em>, I estimate county-level fiscal multipliers using shocks to military employment to instrument for local defense spending. Aggregate shocks to military employment are subject to the Base Realignment and Closure process, which is designed to isolate the recommendations of the Department of Defense from political influences. By exploiting variation in military employment, I address the endogeneity of government spending when using changes in defense spending to estimate fiscal multipliers. In addition, this method addresses the attenuation bias due to geographic measurement error that results from using data on military contracts alone with small geographic units. This extends the common method for estimating state- and national-level fiscal multipliers using variation in defense spending to more local geographic units. My estimates imply a local income multiplier between 0.5 and 0.8, which is smaller than existing estimates that use non-defense-based sources of variation, but larger than the existing estimates based on variation in defense contract spending. </p> <p><br></p> <p>In the third chapter, <em>International Sourcing and Firm Learning: Evidence from Serbian Firms</em>, we find that compared to non-importers, importers are more productive and pay higher wages as they source better quality and cheaper production inputs. However, little is known about how these firms learn about their sourcing markets. We quantify the impact of neighboring firms' importing experience on the decision to start sourcing inputs from new markets using merged customs and administrative data from Serbian firms. We find that firms are more likely to start importing from a new market if firms in the same industry and location have imported from that market and if those firms increased their imports over time. Further, our results support a distinction between imports and exports for the decision to enter foreign markets; unlike exports, import sourcing choices are not independent across countries, but are substitutes. We also investigate origin-country and firm heterogeneity. Our results indicate that the impact of neighboring firms' importing experience is greater for source countries in the European Union market and for firms that are high productivity, foreign owned, and previous importers. Together, these findings suggest that a firm's spatial connections are an important factor in its access to global markets as sources for inputs.</p>

Chapter 1 of this thesis analyzes the determinants of income inequality in Canada using micro-level data from Canada’s censuses (1991, 1996, 2000, 2006, 2016). First, it is shown that market-income inequality is higher than inequality based on other types of income (annual wage, annual pre-tax income and annual income after-tax). Inequality is highly driven by the gap between the income shares held by the top 1% income group compared with other income percentiles. It is also explained by the large gap between income percentile of the top 25% income group and the bottom 75% income group. The top 30% income group held 60% of the population total income, while the bottom 30% income group held under 9% of the population total income. Inequality is different by province across Canada. From the findings, within-group inequality dominates between-group inequality, regardless of whether groups are defined by education, occupation, gender, age, language, marital status, or citizenship status. Second, analyzing the determinants of inequality, the results suggest that they vary significantly across income groups. The results highlight the contribution of any explanatory factor to inequality and the proportion of inequality explained by all observable characteristics. The largest part (between 64% and 74%) of income inequality is not explained by individual observable characteristics. Third, these determinants are modified by redistributive policies such as taxes and transfers. Chapter 2 brings further light on income inequality dynamics by gender and inves tigates its determinants from static and dynamic points of view. Using Canada income data, this research uses different measures of inequality to provide evidence on the changes in inequality by gender from 1991 to 2016. In this study, unconditional quantile regression based on the Re-entered Influence Function (RIF) is used to assess the impact of individual characteristics on income quantiles. The contribution of each relevant covariate on the Theil index by gender is documented by applying regression-based decomposition of inequality. Finally, RIF-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is used to investigate the composite and income structural effects on the changes in inequality measures by gender. Results show that, before 2001, inequality was higher among females than among males, and starting from 2001, the inverse process is observed. The changes in the interquantile differences are not homogeneous along the income distribution for both males and females. The pattern of the effects of covariates on quantiles along the income distribution is gender specific. The findings provide evidence that, in most cases, the income structural effect explains the higher part of inequality. dynamics by gender, even if the size of the impact differs by gender. Furthermore, the composite effect counterbalances the income structural effect most of the time, even if, in some cases, they contribute to the change in inequality measures in the same direction. Chapter 3 investigates the spillover effects of corporate tax across the provinces using Canada’s corporate provincial aggregate data from 1981 to 2019. A dynamic panel model is used to assess the incidence of tax competition within the country. The results show that an increase of statutory taxes in other provinces has a positive effect on the corporate taxable income of a specific province. The results provide the evidence of spillover effects of corporate tax across provinces in Canada. This chapter supports the recommendations proposed by Smart and Vaillancourt (2021) on formula allocation mechanism and by Boadway and Tremblay (2016) on the modernization of business taxation mechanism in Canada.

Civil wars, insecurity, and ethnic disputes have imposed a high human and economic toll in Africa. In this dissertation, I examine the destructive impacts of war on agricultural productivity growth across the continent. Poor agricultural sector performance is more likely to be present around or during times of conflict. Using a panel of 51 countries from 1962-2009 I find that war impedes agricultural productivity growth. But a decline in productivity growth is not associated with the onset of civil war. Results show that low per capita income, stagnant economic growth, a large population, and lack of political freedom correspond to higher incidence of war, while conflict and lack of rainfall are associated with low agricultural productivity growth. I find that armed conflict reduces agricultural productivity growth by 0.76 percent per year and a major armed conflict reduces TFP growth by 1.16 percent. The incidence of a major armed conflict is associated with an efficiency decline in the year by 1.24 percent, substantial setback, for more than three-quarters of countries. This dissertation extends the discussion from productivity and efficiency analysis to the inclusion of the spatial dimension by applying exploratory and confirmatory spatial data analysis and capitalizing on successful spatial techniques and analytical tools proven in geospatial science. The exploratory spatial data analysis provides evidence of spatial autocorrelation in agricultural TFP growth rates in Africa. The results of hot spot analysis reveal that Algeria, Tunisia, Libya in the northern region and Nigeria and Benin in the western region constitute hot spots of agricultural performance and the cold spot, which includes areas of meager productivity, Rwanda and Burundi in central Africa. Africa suffers substantial losses in agricultural productivity when certain countries experience major armed conflict. The dissertation shows that a war may reduce productivity in a given country, but its real effects are larger because it impacts surrounding countries. Overall African TFP declined by 0.0572 percent per year as a result of conflict in Sudan. A war in the Democratic Republic of Congo caused African TFP growth to decline by 0.0285 percent per year.

Thesis (MBA (Business Management))--University of Stellenbosch, 2007. / ENGLISH SUMMARY: With diminishing sources of capital over the past two decades, developing countries have increasingly regarded the flow of foreign direct investment (FDI) as their main source of capital for development. In response to this, countries have also liberalised their policies, making their investment climate friendlier to FDI. This has been accompanied by increased competition amongst such countries to attract FDI, resulting in higher investment incentive packages offered by host governments to potential investors. This study aims to analyse the significance of host country incentives in attracting FDI, and consider whether or not these generous incentives benefit only the foreign investors, without any positive spillovers and linkages being created within the domestic economy, as this is usually given as the strongest motivation for offering these generous incentives. The research has used case studies of three diverse countries to compare and contrast their approach to incentive policies: • Lesotho, where no incentives are offered specifically to foreign investors • Namibia, with its export processing zones (EPZ) and • South Africa, which offers industry-specific incentives. The analysis is undertaken on aggregate FDI inflows to these three countries for the period 1998 to 2004. These are then compared to other selected countries from Africa. A further analysis of relative performance of FDI to gross fixed capital formation and GDP has also been undertaken for the same period. A separate analysis of the flow of FDI to Namibia four years before and after the introduction of the EPZ regime is also undertaken, and the results are compared with those of Lesotho and South Africa during the same period. It can be concluded that fiscal incentives have not had a significant impact on aggregate FDI inflow into Namibia, but that industry specific incentives such as those used in South Africa have had a much better impact. The results also show that there has been little evidence that FDI has created positive spillovers and linkages in these economies and therefore that the use of generous incentives may have benefited foreign investors more and accrued costs for the host governments. The study has also shown that, despite the absence of essential determinants of FDI in countries such as Angola i.e. adequate infrastructure, economic stability and good governance, FDI in Africa has been mainly resource seeking; concentrated on resource and in particular petroleum rich countries such as Nigeria, Angola and Equatorial Guinea. This form of FDI creates little or no linkages with the rest of the economy and therefore contributes which means that little contribution is being made to the broader development of the economy of the continent.