Exporting is essential for economic development. But can firms move from local sales to export sales? How do firms prepare for exporting? This column presents new research showing that worker mobility is an important mechanism by which exporter knowledge spreads through the economy.

The stock market is a powerful tool for controlling corporations’ behaviour. But which is better, a highly liquid market or a number of large blockholders? This column argues in favour of liquidity. Evidence suggests that policymakers should not reduce stock liquidity through greater regulation. While the idea that liquidity encourages short-term trading – rather than long-term governance – sounds intuitive, deeper analysis shows that liquidity is beneficial because it encourages large shareholders to form in the first place, and allows shareholders to punish underperforming firms through selling their stake.

International trade is traditionally thought of as goods crossing borders. Trade in services, however, is becoming increasingly important for high-income countries. This column, using Belgian firm-level data from 1995-2005, argues that trade in goods and services differ deeply in key aspects such as firm participation rates, size and frequency of shipments, entry and exit rates in foreign markets and in growth strategies.

Increasingly, people are pointing the finger of blame for economic woe at large firms. This column argues that organisation design is often affected by government trade policy. If firm organisation design has implications for consumer welfare (in terms of prices and quality of product), evidence suggests that governments should make sure that in future, trade policy and corporate governance policy are more complementary.

Since the 1980s governments in the US, UK and France have been implementing ‘enterprise zones’ to tackle inequalities within cities. This column examines the latest French experiment in the 2000s. It suggests that the zones were largely successful in attracting small firms, but that this was mostly due to opportunistic relocation within municipalities.

Firms that reorganise production to grow account for almost 40% of the value added created in the manufacturing sector. They add layers of management, increase by 7% the average hours worked in the firm, and reduce the average wage at pre-existing layers of managers or workers by 11%. This column presents new stylised facts about the way firms organise production and explains how recent advances in economic theory can help to understand these findings.

This column summarises a wealth of literature that tries to understand what determines productivity, which is often referred to as a measure of our ignorance. It concludes with a call for more data – including currently unmeasured aspects of business’s production practices such as producer-level prices. While collecting more data is costly, this column argues that there is much to be gained in exchange.

What microeconomic forces drove the structural transformation of India’s economy in recent decades? This column studies firm-level data and portrays a dynamic economy driven by the growth of private and foreign firms. But the Indian economy did not go through an industrial shakeout phase driven by creative destruction. The endurance of incumbent firms prevented a dramatic microeconomic transformation.

This column analyses the impact of the euro’s adoption upon European firm’s productivity and international competitiveness. The euro produced significant competitiveness gains for relatively small economies such as Finland, Belgium, and Austria. If Denmark and Sweden had joined the euro area in recent years, they would have enjoyed gains equivalent to a 5% across-the-board reduction in trade frictions.