Emanuele Forlani

Liquidity Constraints and Firm's Export Activity

This paper will assess the importance of internal firm resources in overcoming sunk entry costs associated with export. When firms are not able to raise additional external funds for investments, they are credit-constrained, and in such a case, new exporters have to rely on their internal liquidity to pay sunk costs. Using a data set of small and medium size Italian enterprises (SMEs), we find that entry probability in the export market is affected by the level of cash stock for constrained firms. We propose a methodology used to identify a priori constrained firms, employing index analysis as used in business economics. The estimation of the Euler equation for investments confirms the fitness of our classification. In addition we find that exporters show higher liquidity if they raise the number of destinations. Finally, we do not find evidence that entry in the export market improves firm\s financial health, while ex-ante new entrants are found to be relatively more leveraged.

Irish firms’ productivity and Imported Inputs

In this paper, we empirically analyze the evolution of firms’ productivity and how the efficiency changes with variations in the inputs’ origin. Using firm-level information on a sample of Irish firms, we assess the importance of the imported inputs’ quota for a firm’s efficiency, as well as starting import activity. The main findings are that an increase in the intensive margin of imports raises firms’ efficiency of domestic firms; in addition heterogeneous effects across firms are detected. Unlike the findings of most of the literature, there is weak evidence of self-selection in import activity; differently from previous research when we introduce fixed effects, the self-selection disappears. Instead, the few observed firms that start importing raise their productivity compared to non-importing firms; learning by importing is suspected. The results suggest an important policy implication: policies that favor the imports of intermediates enhance the productivity of domestic firms, making them more competitive in the international markets.

Impact of Low‐Skilled Immigration on Female Labour Supply

In this paper, segmenting the market by educational levels, we 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 a harmonized dataset (the Cross-National Equivalent File), we estimate its main comparative static results. The results suggest that the share of immigrants working in services is positively associated with an increase of native-born womens labour supply at the intensive margin, if skilled, and at the extensive margin, if unskilled. Moreover, the results show that these effects are larger in countries with less-supportive family policies.

Natives and migrants in home production: the case of Germany

In this paper, we assess the impact of international migration, and the induced home-care service labour supply shock, on fertility decisions and labour supply of native females in Germany. Specifically, we consider individual data of native women from the German Socio-Economic Panel and we merge them with the data on the share of female immigrants and other regional labour market characteristics. We find that an increase of the share of female immigrants at the local level induces women to work longer hours and positively affects the probability to have a child. This effect strengthens for (medium) skilled women and, among them, for women younger than 35 years of age. The negative change in household work attitude confirms the behavioural validity of our results.

Competition in Services and Efficiency of Manufacturing Firms: Does 'Liberalization' Matter?

In developed economies, services form an increasing proportion of inputs employed by manufacturing firms. While downstream firms act in a very competitive environment, services often operate in protected or highly regulated markets. In this paper, I empirically investigate whether the degree of competition in services affects the efficiency of manufacturing firms through services production inputs. By using both firm and sector level data for France, through input-output analysis I show that variations in the upstream competition, especially in network industries, affect the average productivity level in manufacturing industry: an increase in average markups is associated with a reduction in manufacturing productivity. The findings differ according to firms size and initial efficiency level: in the short run less efficient and small firms are relatively mostly harmed by an uncompetitive service sector.