Past Events
Past Events 14. CompNet Annual Conference (Vilnius, 25-26 September 2025) The 14th CompNet Annual Conference, co-hosted with the Bank of Lithuania, took place on 25–26 September…
See page
12 CompNet Annual Conference
12th CompNet Annual Conference The 12th CompNet Annual Conference , centered around the theme "Firm’s Performance in challenging times: Input costs, Technology, Productivity, and…
See page
FINPRO 4
FINPRO 4 25-26 September 2024 - Barcelona (ESADE) The FINPRO4 Conference took place on 25-26 September 2024 at ESADE Business School in Barcelona. Thanks to the support of our…
See page
10th CompNet Annual Conference
10th CompNet Annual Conference This year CompNet celebrates its 10th Annual Conference, together with Banque de France as co-host, which took place in Paris. The topic of the…
See page
2020 Annual Conference of the OECD Global Forum of Productivity
2020 Annual Conference of the OECD Global Forum of Productivity This year CompNet celebrates its 10th Annual Conference, together with Banque de France as co-host, which will…
See page
8th CompNet Annual Conference
From Micro to Macro: Market Power, Firms’ Heterogeneity and Investment 8th Annual Conference of CompNet, jointly organized with IMF, EIB, ENRI and IWH, March 18-19 2019, European…
See page
7th CompNet Annual Conference
Economic Growth, Trade and Productivity Dispersion 7 th CompNet Annual Conference, June 21-22, 2018, Leopoldina, Halle (Saale), Germany The main target of this conference was to…
See page
Declining Business Dynamism in Europe: The Role of Shocks, Market Power, and Technology
Filippo Biondi, Sergio Inferrera, Matthias Mertens, Javier Miranda
VoxEU CEPR,
2024
Abstract
We study changes in business dynamism in Europe after 2000 using novel micro-aggregated data that we collected for 19 European countries. In all countries, we document a broad-based decline in job reallocation rates that concerns most economic sectors and size classes. This decline is mainly driven by dynamics within sectors, size, and age classes rather than by compositional changes. Large and mature firms experience the strongest decline in job reallocation rates. Simultaneously, the employment shares of young firms decline. Consistent with US evidence, firms’ employment has become less responsive to productivity shocks. However, the dispersion of firms’ productivity shocks has decreased too. To enhance our understanding of these patterns, we derive and apply a novel firm-level framework that relates changes in firms’ sales, market power, wages, and production technology to firms’ responsiveness and job reallocation.
Read article
Labor Market Power and Between-Firm Wage (In)Equality
Matthias Mertens
International Journal of Industrial Organization,
Vol. 91 (December),
2023
Abstract
I study how labor market power affects firm wage differences using German manufacturing sector firm-level data (1995-2016). In past decades, labor market power increasingly moderated rising between-firm wage differences. This is because high-paying firms possess high and increasing labor market power and pay wages below competitive levels, whereas low-wage firms pay competitive or even above competitive wages. Over time, large, high-wage, high-productivity firms generate increasingly large labor market rents while charging comparably low product markups. This provides novel insights on why such top firms are profitable and successful. Using micro-aggregated data covering most economic sectors, I validate key results for multiple European countries.
Read article
28.09.2023 • 24/2023
Joint Economic Forecast 2/2023: Purchasing power returns ‒ political uncertainty high
According to the Joint Economic Forecast, Germany's gross domestic product declines by 0.6% in 2023. This is a strong downward revision of 0.9 percentage points from the forecast made in spring 2023. "The most important reason for this revision is that industry and private consumption are recovering more slowly than we expected in spring," says Oliver Holtemöller, Vice President and Head of the Macroeconomics Department at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
Oliver Holtemöller
Read
