Services form an increasing proportion of the inputs used in manufacturing. We explore empirically whether competition in the service sector affects downstream manufacturing firms' efficiency, via the inputs used. Using French micro-data for services, we calculate proxies for competition in services, and then use Input-Output matrices to link services to manufacturing sectors. we find that there is a positive and significant relation between the extent of competition and firms' productivity.
In this paper, we investigate the empirical relationship between firms' productivity in manufacturing and imports of intermediate inputs. Using a unique dataset for Ireland, we exploit the variability of import intensity within firm‐year pairs to identify the impact of importing on firms' efficiency. Our findings show that an increase in the intensive margin of imports affects positively the efficiency of domestic Irish firms, in particular through the imports of materials. Most importantly, we find that responses to variations in import intensity depend on the initial level of productivity. The more efficient a domestic firm is, the larger the benefits from importing are. The results are robust to different estimation techniques and sample composition.
"One of the key questions on international migration concerns its benefits and costs for the receiving economies. Assessing the overall net gain or loss to the economy from immigration is a challenging task both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. Immigration can affect the receiving economy through several channels: wages or employment effects on native workers, changes in output structure, fiscal effects, effects on house prices, and so on. In this chapter, we concentrate on one of the most important channel: the impact on wage and employment of natives. We consider the impact of immigration on a subgroup of the population that could particularly benefits from it, the female population. Since international migration may change the prevailing wage rates in the sectors where a large number of migrants looks for a job, we focus on immigrants working in the household service sector. The underlying idea is that migrants could increase the availability of services to households, like childcare, housekeeping, or caring for elderly, reducing their market prices. This effect could induce women to change their decision on participation to the labour market. In the empirical analysis, we use data of countries with quite different institutions (Australia, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, and the US). This gives us the opportunity to understand whether the effect of migrants on female labour supply is relevant in countries where policies are more or less supportive to families." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku) ((en))
This paper contributes to the literature on the impact of immigrants on native female labour supply. By segmenting the market by educational levels, we are able to investigate which native-born women are more affected by an increase of low-skilled immigrants working in the household service sector. We present a model of individual choice with home production and, using an harmonized dataset (CNEF), we test its main predictions. Our sample includes countries implementing different family policies. Our results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services in a given local labour market is positively associated with the probability of native-born women to increase their labour supply at the intensive margin (number of hours worked per week), if skilled, and at the extensive margin (participation decision), if unskilled. Moreover, they show that these effects are larger in countries with less family-supportive policies. ; Wir untersuchen die Auswirkungen von Zuwanderung auf das Arbeitsangebot einheimischer Frauen. Insbesondere betrachten wir die Auswirkung des Anstiegs geringqualifizierter Zuwanderer, die im Haushaltssektor arbeiten, auf hoch- und geringqualifizierte einheimische Frauen. Wir modellieren individuelle Entscheidungen über die Haushaltsproduktion und testen die wichtigsten Aussagen dieses Modells anhand eines harmonisierten Datensatzes (CNEF). Unsere Stichprobe enthält Länder mit unterschiedlich großzügiger Familienpolitik. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass mit einem höheren Anteil an Migranten im Dienstleistungssektor eines lokal begrenzten Arbeitsmarktes die einheimischen hochqualifizierten Frauen ihr Arbeitsangebot erhöhen. Gleichzeitig steigt die Partizipationsrate unqualifizierter einheimischer Frauen. Darüber hinaus zeigen wir, dass diese Effekte in Ländern mit restriktiverer Familienpolitik stärker ausfallen.
Abstract We develop a novel framework that simultaneously allows recovering heterogeneity in demand, quantity total factor productivity and markups across firms while leaving the correlation between the three dimensions unrestricted. We accomplish this by explicitly introducing demand heterogeneity and systematically exploiting assumptions used in previous productivity estimation approaches. In doing so, we provide an exact decomposition of revenue productivity in terms of the underlying heterogeneities, thus bridging the gap between quantity and revenue productivity estimations. We use Belgian firms' production data to quantify total factor productivity, demand and markups, and show how they are correlated with each other across time and with measures obtained from other approaches. In doing so, we find quantity total factor productivity and demand to be strongly negatively correlated with each other, so suggesting a trade-off between the quality of a firm's products and their production cost. We also show how our framework provides deeper and sharper insights on the response of firms to increasing import competition from China. In particular, we find that changes in revenue productivity materialise as the outcome of complex and sometimes offsetting changes in quantity total factor productivity, demand, markups and production scale.
