Abstract
This paper analyses how increased integration and the ongoing enlargement of the EU’s internal market affected the performance of Swedish manufacturing firms. The pro-competitive effect of international trade, in term of intensified import competition on domestic firms’ market power, has been investigated extensively at the industry-level. In contrast to previous studies, this analysis is based on detailed firm-level information and import data divided into both an EU member group and a group of recently approved EU member candidates. It focuses on how imports from these groups, together with imports from other non-European trading partners, impact on firm-level profitability, while taking firm-specific efficiency effects into account. The findings are that imports from the new EU-candidates, Japan and Asian newly industrialized countries seem to have a disciplinary effect on firm-level profits, whereas imports from EU-member countries only appear to have an impact on firms with large market shares and in highly concentrated industries.
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Lundin, N.N. Has Import Disciplined Swedish Manufacturing Firms in the 1990s?. Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade 4, 109–133 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JICT.0000037357.99142.40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:JICT.0000037357.99142.40