TITLE:
Manufacturing Firms’ Performance and Productivity: Evidence from North and South European, Scandinavian and Balkan Countries
AUTHORS:
Christos Lemonakis, Konstantinos Vassakis, Alexandros Garefalakis, Xanthi Partalidou
KEYWORDS:
Manufacturing, Performance, FDI, R&D, Competitiveness, Sales per Employee
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.6 No.4,
August
24,
2016
ABSTRACT: The purpose of the
study is to analyze and compare the financial performance of manufacturing
firms of Central and South European, Scandinavian and Balkan countries. In
addition, the impact of firm’s productivity on country’s export intensity,
foreign direct investments, R&D activity and financing costs is examined. This is the first comparative study making
an inter-country, interregional and inter-manufacturing sector
comparison of the financial performance of manufacturing firms in European,
Scandinavian and Balkan regions through selected countries. This research attempts to investigate the relation of macro variables, such as country export
intensity, FDI and R&D on the competitiveness of the manufacturing firms in
those countries measured on the firm level. In order to access the factors that
affect the competitiveness of the manufacturing firms in each one of the 15
countries of the sample, we run 15 Tobit (truncated) models, using balanced
panel data for the period 2008-2011.