Globalisation, Productivity and Technology
Firms have to adjust constantly to the challenges posed by globalisation. Understanding these adjustments are of immense scientific and policy interest.
Innovation and technological progress are important drivers of economic growth and leadership in the world economy. Globalisation expands the interdependencies across countries. International trade, offshoring and migration allow technologies and their benefits to travel and diffuse across countries. Global markets allow firms to access markets of a size unthinkable some decades ago, while forcing them to compete with larger number of players in a fast-changing playfield. The Globalisation, Productivity and Technology program examines the dynamics of firms and technologies in the fast changing world economy.
The program is structured along several main research lines. One area explores the role of innovation and industrial policy in open economies, analysing how policy makers can promote national firms' competitiveness stimulating technological and organisational innovations.
Another research line explores the effects of globalisation on innovation and productivity growth, as well as the dynamics of technology diffusion.
A third line focuses on the different decisions that firms make in how to serve international markets (or not), which markets they choose to serve, and where they choose to locate their production globally. The impact of these decisions on firms' growth and productivities are of particular interest.
Finally, the consequences of trade, offshoring and technological progress on labour market outcomes such as the level and the structure of employment and wages is another key area of research. The program uses both theoretical modelling, mostly drawing from the trade and open economy macro literature, and econometric analysis of large micro level data sets. Much of the applied work is based on firm data for the UK, China, Vietnam and Germany. However, more countries are included as our members manage to access new data.