This paper documents that a large fraction of trade flows at the firm level consists of simultaneous imports and exports in identical products, narrowly defined at the 8-digit product classification, which we call pass-on trade (POT). We use data on imports and exports at the firm and product level for Slovenian manufacturing firms in the period 1994–2008, to show that, on average, 70 % of all exporting firms engage in POT. This corresponds to more than 50 % of all exported products. Thus, imported products that are exported again by the same firm is a statistical regularity of trade of Slovenian manufacturing firms. We document that the use of POT is increasing in firm size, product diversification, multinational status as well as firm productivity and profitability. We offer and explore empirically a number of explanations for POT. Among possible explanations, we find evidence on the importance of firms’ multinational networks and demand complementarities between firms’ own and POT products. The latter confirms the theoretical explanations for carry-along trade (CAT) as developed by the recent work of Bernard et al. ( 2012 ).
COBISS.SI-ID: 21109990
The article analyzes the admission fees that foreign and domestic tourists are willing to pay, respectively, for the National Museum of Iran, and examines the relationship between the tourists’ willingness-to-pay and their various socio-economic, geographical, and psychological characteristics. It was established that the two segments of tourists differ substantially, both in their characteristics and in their behavior. Unlike for domestic tourists, the entrance fees that foreign tourists are willing to pay are substantially higher than the current single entrance fee, while higher entrance fees would not decrease the consumer surplus significantly. The findings, if applied with caution, could provide museum managers with the rationale for adopting dual pricing and with practical directions for setting such schemes.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1683854
This paper presents a comparative study of the importance of direct technology transfer and spillovers through FDI on a set of 10 transition countries, using a common methodology and appropriate methods to account for selection and simultaneity correction. This paper considers by far the largest firm level dataset (more than 90,000 firms) used by any study on the spillover effects of FDI. The main novelty of the paper is the explicit control for various sources of firm heterogeneity when accounting for different effects of FDI on firm performance. This work shows that the heterogeneity of firms in terms of absorptive capacity, size, productivity and technology levels affect the results. Controlling for these variables leads to some interesting results, which contrast with the previous empirical work in the field. We find that horizontal spillovers have become increasingly important over the last decade, and they may even become more important than vertical spillovers. Positive horizontal spillovers are equally distributed across size classes of firms, while negative horizontal spillovers seem to be more likely to accrue to smaller firms. Moreover, positive horizontal spillovers seem more likely to be present in medium or high productivity firms with higher absorptive capacities, while negative horizontal spillovers are more likely to affect low to medium productivity firms. These findings suggest that both direct effects from foreign ownership as well as the spillovers from foreign firms substantially depend on the absorptive capacity and productivity level of individual firms. In addition, these results show that foreign presence may also affect smaller firms to a larger extent than larger firms, but this impact may be in either direction.
COBISS.SI-ID: 1675662
Paper analyses the reasons why in the standard decompositions of the aggregate productivity negative contributions of the components measusring realocation are found. More explanations are possible: the effects of
COBISS.SI-ID: 21894118
This paper analyzes the evolution of private returns to tertiary education during the period of transition from a socialist to a market economy using the personal income tax data of all Slovenian workers employed between 1994 and 2008. We document a rich interplay between supply and demand in the labor markets of high school and university graduates. We show that, in spite of significant increases in the labor supply, the demand for university graduates dominated and increased the rates of return in the early period of transition (1994-2001), while in the later period (2001-2008) the opposite was the case. We also provide evidence on considerable heterogeneity in the rates of return between genders, levels, and elds of study, with particularly large (low) returns to the elds that were suppressed (favored) during socialism. These initial di erences in returns have, however, gradually declined.
COBISS.SI-ID: 21652966