We assess the total factor productivity of 35,752 manufacturing establishments before and after management buyouts (MBOs). MBO plants are less productive than comparable plants before the transfer of ownership. They experience a substantial increase in productivity after a buyout, which appears to be due to measures undertaken by new owners to reduce the labor intensity of production, via outsourcing of intermediate goods and materials. These findings, which are pervasive across industries, imply that MBOs reduce agency costs and enhance economic efficiency. Our evidence is consistent with Jovanovic and Rousseau (2002), who suggest that ownership changes shift resources to more efficient uses and to better managers. © 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This paper models the determinants of exporting (both in terms of export propensity and export intensity), with a particular emphasis on the importance of absorptive capacity and the endogenous link between exporting and undertaking R&D. Based on a merged dataset of the 2001 Community Innovation Survey and the 2000 Annual Respondents Database for the UK, our results suggest that establishment size plays a fundamental role in explaining exporting. Meanwhile, alongside other factors, undertaking R&D activities and having greater absorptive capacity (for scientific knowledge, international co-operation, and organizational structure) significantly reduce entry barriers into export markets, having controlled for self-selectivity into exporting. Nevertheless, conditional on entry into international markets, only greater absorptive capacity (associated with scientific knowledge) seems to further boost export performance in such markets, whereas spending on R&D no longer has an impact on exporting behaviour once we have taken into account its endogenous nature.

This paper compares the performance of U.K. plants that were acquired by the foreign-owned sector during 1987-1992 with other comparable subgroups of plants operating at the same time (including plants acquired by U.K.-owned companies). The principal aim is to consider the types of plants that were acquired and whether after acquisition they performed above or below average when compared to other manufacturing plants. The results show that foreign-owned enterprises acquired the most-productive plants previously operated by U.K. enterprises. After acquisition, there is some evidence that productivity declined, which would be consistent with difficulties associated with assimilating these established plants into the new organization. © 2002 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology