Bruegel

About: Bruegel is a nonprofit organization based out in Brussels, Belgium. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Monetary policy & European union. The organization has 76 authors who have published 384 publications receiving 9397 citations.

The Happy Few: The Internationalisation of European Firms

Abstract: Policymakers tend to view the internationalisation of firms from the perspective of export, import and FDI statistics. A lack of statistical information at the firm level has so far prevented the systematic inclusion of firm-level analysis in the policymaker's standard toolbox. Some firm-level datasets are now available, however, and their analysis reveals some new facts that are simply unobservable at the aggregate level.

What Explains the Low Profitability of Chinese Banks

Abstract: This paper analyzes empirically what explains the low profitability of Chinese banks for the period 1997-2004. We find that better capitalized banks tend to be more profitable. The same is true for banks with a relatively larger share of deposits and for more X-efficient banks. In addition, a less concentrated banking system increases bank profitability, which basically reflects that the four state-owned commercial banks - China’s largest banks - have been the main drag for system’s profitability. We find the same negative influence for China’s development banks (so called Policy Banks), which are fully state-owned. Instead, more market oriented banks, such as joint-stock commercial banks, tend to be more profitable, which again points to the influence of government intervention in explaining bank performance in China. These findings should not come as a surprise for a banking system which has long been functioning as a mechanism for transferring huge savings to meet public policy goals.

On Young Highly Innovative Companies: Why They Matter and How (not) to Policy Support Them

Abstract: Recent policy initiatives in the EU aim at supporting so-called young highly innovative companies (YICs). This article provides empirical evidence from German CIS data on the innovative performances of this specific type of firms, supporting why they matter. We first characterize YICs in the sample of innovation active firms. We show that firms that combine newness, smallness, and high R&D intensity are rare in the sample of innovative firms, but achieve significantly higher innovative sales than other innovative firms, especially innovative sales that are new to the market. Not surprisingly, YICs view financial constraints, both internal and external, as an important factor hampering their innovation activities, significantly more so than other innovation active firms. This access to finance problem is an often used motive for government intervention. On the effectiveness of subsidies, our results suggest that the subsidy allocation mechanisms at place in Germany during the sample period are not associated with relatively higher innovative performance of the subsidized YICs as compared to other recipients. Copyright 2010 The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Associazione ICC. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

The governance and performance of universities: evidence from Europe and the US

Abstract: We test the hypothesis that universities are more productive when they are both more autonomous and face more competition. Using survey data, we construct indices of university autonomy and competition for both Europe and the United States. We show that there are strong positive correlations between these indices and multiple measures of university output. To obtain causal evidence, we investigate exogenous shocks to US universities’ expenditures over three decades. These shocks arise through the political appointment process, which we use to generate instrumental variables. We find that an exogenous increase in a university’s expenditure generates more output, measured by either patents or publications, if the university is more autonomous and faces more competition. Exploiting variation over time in the ‘stakes’ of competitions for US federal research grants, we also find that universities generate more output for a given expenditure when research competitions are high stakes. We draw lessons, arguing that European universities could benefit from a combination of greater autonomy and greater accountability. Greater accountability might come through increased reliance on competitive grants, enhanced competition for students and faculty (promoted by reforms that increase mobility), and yardstick competitions (which often take the form of assessment exercises). — Philippe Aghion, Mathias Dewatripont, Caroline Hoxby, Andreu Mas-Colell and Andre Sapir