This paper analyzes the causal relationship between foreign ownership and various aspects of plant performance using micro data from the Indonesian Census of Manufacturing. It examines the implications of foreign ownership in two different contexts: foreign acquisitions and foreign privatizations. To control for the possible endogeneity of FDI decision propensity score matching is combined with a difference-in-differences approach. The results indicate that foreign ownership leads to significant productivity improvements in the acquired plants. The improvements become visible in the acquisition year and continue in subsequent periods. After three years, the acquired plants exhibit a 13.5 percent higher productivity than the control group. The rise in productivity is a result of restructuring, as acquired plants increase investment outlays, employment and wages. Foreign ownership also appears to enhance the integration of plants into the global economy through increased exports and imports. Finally, productivity improvements and evidence of restructuring are also found in the context of foreign

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This paper provides evidence about the effects of dismissals-for-cause requirements, a specific component of employment protection legislation that has received little attention despite its potential relevance. We study a quasi-natural experiment generated by a law introduced in Portugal in 1989: out of the 12 paragraphs in the law that dictated the costly procedure required for dismissals for cause, eight did not apply to firms employing 20 or fewer workers. Using detailed matched employer-employee longitudinal data and difference-in-differences matching methods, we examine the impact of that differentiated change in firing costs upon several variables, measured from 1991 to 1999. Unlike predicted by theory, we do not find robust evidence of effects on worker flows. However, firm performance improves considerably while wages fall. Overall, the results suggest that firing costs of the type studied here decrease workers ’ effort and increase their bargaining power.

www.ifpri.org IFPRI Division Discussion Papers contain preliminary material and research results. They have not been subject to formal external reviews managed by IFPRI’s Publications Review Committee, but have been reviewed by at least

International research collaboration is a growing social phenomenon (Wagner and Leydesdorff 2006; NSF-NSB 2008). It results in part as a strategy to deal with increasingly complex problems and raising costs of research (Luukkonen, Persson; et al. 1992; Gibbons,

Acknowledgements: This study would not have been possible without the help and assistance of numerous individuals and institutions, including Indiana University and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Indianapolis Power and Light. This material is based upon

T +1 202.862.5600 • F +1 202.467.4439 • www.capri.cgiar.orgThe CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) is an initiative of the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The initiative promotes comparative research on the role of property rights and collective action institutions in shaping the efficiency, sustainability, and equity of natural resource systems. CAPRi’s Secretariat is

We measure the returns to attending a highly ranked law school using the “After the JD” survey of lawyers …rst passing the Bar Exam in 2000. In 2002, those lawyers that went to top 10 law schools made, on average, 25 % more than those that went to schools ranked 11-20 and over 50 % more than those that went to schools ranked 21-100. Graduates of Top 10 schools were also much more likely to work in large law …rms in leading law markets. We use two methods to assess the degree of selection in the law school prestige premium – the methods developed by Altonji, Elder, and Taber (2005), who focus on the relationship between observable and unobservable variables, and propensity score matching. Our analysis suggests that only a small portion of the large returns to law school reputation are due to selection. We use NLSY data to contrast our law school results with the e¤ect of undergraduate prestige on income and conclude that the selection issue is more important in explaining the undergraduate premium than the law school premium. We conclude that either there is a large causal e¤ect of going to a top law school or selection based on unobservables is much more important for law schools than for undergraduate schools.

This paper analyses the effect of foreign acquisition on survival probability and employment growth of target plant using data on Swedish manufacturing plants during the period 1993-2002. An improvement over previous studies is that we take into account firm level heterogeneity by separating the targeted plants into those within Swedish MNEs, Swedish exporting non-MNEs, and purely domestic firms before foreign takeover. The results, controlling for possible endogeneity of the acquisition dummy using an IV and propensity score matching approach suggest that acquisition by foreign owners increases the lifetime of the acquired plants only if the plant was an exporter. The effect differs depending on whether the acquisition is horizontal or vertical. We also find robust positive employment growth effects only for exporters, and only if the takeover is vertical, not horizontal.

We use newly available representative panel data for manufacturing enterprises in West and East Germany to investigate the link between production-related subsidies and exports. We report that only a small fraction of enterprises is subsidized, and that exports and subsidies are positively related. Using a matching approach to investigate the causal effect of subsidies on export activities we find no impact of subsidies on the probability to start exporting, and only weak evidence for an impact of subsidies on the share of exports in total sales in West Germany but no evidence