Cecilia Hornok, Ph.D.

Postdoc Researcher, Kiel Centre for Globalization
Postdoc Researcher of Research Centre “International Trade and Investment”, Kiel Institute for the World Economy
Email: cecilia.hornok@ifw-kiel.de
Tel.: +49(0)431-8814-468

Expertise:

  • International trade
  • Heterogeneous firms and globalisation
  • Applied panel data econometrics

 


KCG Working Paper No. 22: Why are Africa’s Female Entrepreneurs not Playing the Export Game? Evidence from Ghana

7th October 2020
KCG Secretary
Authors: Charles Ackah, Holger Görg, Aoife Hanley, and Cecília Hornok

We explore the export performance of Africa’s underperforming female entrepreneurs, using the Ghanaian ISSER-IGC panel, a comprehensive dataset of manufacturing firms for 2011–2015. Uniquely, the data provides information about the severity of key business constraints, across both male and female entrepreneurs[...]

A New KCG Paper on Foreign Trade and Sustainable Business Practices in Ghana is Published Today

5th October 2020
KCG Secretary
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Foreign trade and sustainability is high on the political agenda. German and international policy-makers undertake increasing efforts to use trade policy more effectively for sustainable development purposes. A growing toolbox is meant to facilitate these policy aims, including sustainability chapters in trade agreements, sustainable value chains and sustainability standards. Meanwhile, scientific evidence on how trading activities impact on firms’ sustainable behaviour is limited[...]

A New KCG Research Project on the Impact of Special Economic Zones on Inequality

11th May 2020
KCG Secretary
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Inward foreign direct investment (FDI) is generally considered to be advantageous for supporting economic development in the emerging economies. Foreign investors do not only bring financial resources, know-how and technologies that are (relatively) limited on site into the FDI destination countries but also help local firms to gain better access to and benefit from the global production networks[...]

KCG Researchers Gave Presentations at the Aarhus-Kiel Workshop 2019

27th December 2019
KCG Secretary
The Aarhus-Kiel Workshop is an annual research workshop, jointly organized by the Research Centre for Firms and Industry Dynamics at the Aarhus University and the Kiel Institute for the World Economy in cooperation with KCG. It serves as an excellent platform for scholars from Aarhus and Kiel who are specialised in globalization research to present and discuss research (in progress) with other experts in the field[...]

KCG Recently Started a Further Research Project on Trade and Sustainable Development in Ghana

19th December 2019
KCG Secretary
With a specific focus on Africa, KCG researchers were involved in several research projects focusing on trade and foreign direct investment as well as their impact in Africa in 2018/2019. The projects were financially supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ GmbH). As to trade, KCG researchers carried out a first project focusing on Ghana from late 2018 to mid-2019, in cooperation with Dr. Charles Ackah (University of Ghana)[...]

The 2019 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization Successfully Took Place in Vienna

5th December 2019
KCG Secretary
As part of a multi-year cooperation between the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) and KCG, the 2019 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization (FGI) “The Future of Global Value Chains (GVCs): How the Fourth Industrial Revolution is Changing Global Production Networks” took place on November 19, 2019 at the UNIDO Headquarters in Vienna. The 2019 FGI brought together around 100 policymakers[...]

2019 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization is Now Open for Registration

16th October 2019
KCG Secretary
The 2019 Forum on Globalization and Industrialization (FGI) with its overarching topic “The Future of Global Value Chains (GVCs): How the Fourth Industrial Revolution is Changing Global Production Networks” will take place on Nov. 19, 2019 at the Vienna International Centre in Vienna, Austria. This is the fourth annual conference jointly organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Kiel Centre for Globalization (KCG) at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy[...]

Research Report on Trade for Development in Ghana Published Today

5th June 2019
KCG Secretary
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A new research report “Can Trade Foster Development? Firm-level Evidence for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana” as a key output of the KCG research project “How can Trade Contribute to Development? Micro-based Evidence for Ghana” is published and available online today. The research project has been funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ GmbH). The report was prepared by Prof. Holger Görg Ph.D. (KCG Managing Director) and Cecília Hornok, Ph.D. (KCG Fellow), in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Charles Ackah from the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic[…]

KCG Researchers Participated in the CASS-IfW Workshop 2019 on Global Challenges and Solutions

31st May 2019
KCG Secretary
The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, one of the scientific partners of KCG, organised an academic workshop with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in cooperation with the Global Solutions Initiative on April 16, 2019 in Kiel Germany. Under the overarching theme “Global Challenges and Global Solutions”, more than 40 scholars, including a 20-person CASS-Delegation […]

KCG Study on Trade for Development Presented in Accra, Ghana

21st May 2019
KCG Secretary
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A new KCG Study “Can Trade Foster Development? Firm-level Evidence for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in Ghana”, in cooperation with the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research of the University of Ghana, will be presented by Prof. Dr. Charles Ackah (University of Ghana) and Prof. Holger Görg, Ph.D. (KCG Managing Director) for the first time at a dissemination and policy workshop of the same name on May 21, 2019 in Accra, Ghana. The study, financially supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), investigates the impact of Ghanaian manufacturing SMEs’ exporting and importing activities on their own and other firms’ productivity, employment structure, wage levels, skill structure, and training activities and on the gender equality based on a unique survey-based firm-level database. Cecília Hornok […]

KCG Researchers Participated in the Global Solutions Summit 2019

18th April 2019
KCG Secretary
The Global Solutions Summit 2019 with its overarching theme “Recoupling Social and Economic Progress towards a Global Paradigm Change” was held by the Global Solutions Initiative on March 18-19, 2019 at ESMT in Berlin. The multi-stakeholder event gathered 1600 experts from more than 100 countries together to explore and discuss policy recommendations on issues such as trade and investment, multilateralism, social cohesion, climate change and sustainable development[…]

KCG Research Seminar by Charles G. Ackah on Firm Responses to Electricity Shortages in Ghana

26th February 2019
KCG Secretary
Within the framework of a joint project “How can Trade Contribute to Development? Micro-based Evidence for Ghana”, Dr. Charles G. Ackah (University of Ghana) will visit the Kiel Centre for Globalization (KCG) from February 26 to March 1, 2019. In addition to research meetings and discussions with the KCG project members, Prof. Holger Görg, Ph.D. (KCG Managing Director) and Cecilia Hornok, Ph.D. (KCG Fellow), Ackah will give a KCG research seminar based on his current paper “Productivity Losses and Firm Responses to Electricity Shortages: Evidence from Ghana”[…]

KCG Researcher Joined a Workshop on the World Development Report 2020

28th January 2019
KCG Secretary
The World Development Report 2020 of the World Bank will address the topic of Global Value Chains (GVCs) and their role in economic development. The World Bank Group and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) organized a workshop in Berlin on January 18, 2019 to discuss the concept note of the report. During the event, numerous experts and representatives from international organizations, academia, politics, business and NGOs were given the opportunity to inspect the draft document and give their feedback to the authors. KCG Researcher, Cecília Hornok, Ph.D., also participated in the workshop as a discussant[…]

Trade for Development? A New KCG Research Project Focusing on Ghana

9th November 2018
KCG Secretary
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The Aid for Trade (AfT) Initiative of the World Trade Organisation aims at supporting developing countries to better deal with trade-related constraints and barriers so that they can be better integrated into the world economy through their engagement in international trade. A key principle behind the AfT Initiative is that free and fair trade can make significant contributions to the economic development and poverty reduction in the developing and emerging countries. Many industrialised countries have initiated new policy measures and/or adjusted the existing ones to support the implementation of the AfT Initiative. One example is Germany[…]

A New KCG Working Paper on Firm Markups and International Trade is Now Online

8th March 2018
KCG Secretary
Firms involved in international trade are larger, more productive and pay higher wages than non-trading firms, as ample evidence from the economics literature shows. The paper “Markups of Exporters and Importers: Evidence for Hungary” (forthcoming in The Scandinavian Journal of Economics) by Cecilia Hornok from the Kiel Centre for Globalization and Balázs Muraközy from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences investigates the less well-documented relationship between international trade and firms’ markup over marginal cost[…]

KCG Working Paper No. 9: Markups of Exporters and Importers: Evidence from Hungary

8th March 2018
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Authors: Cecilia Hornok and Balázs Muraközy

This paper studies the relationship between firm-level markups and trade status using balance sheet information linked to detailed trade data from Hungary between 1995-2003. We find that importing is strongly positively correlated with markups both across and within firms. We argue that this correlation can reflect three channels: self-selection, higher physical productivity resulting from access to a larger variety of inputs and quality upgrading based on high-quality imported intermediate inputs[…]

Markups of Exporters and Importers: Evidence from Hungary

1st March 2018
KCG Secretary
Authors: Cecília Hornok and Balázs Muraközy (The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 2019, Vol. 121(3), 1303-1333)

This paper studies the relationship between different proxies of firm-level markups and trade status using balance sheet information linked to detailed trade data from Hungary between 1995-2003. We find that importing is strongly positively correlated with markup measures both across and within firms. We argue that this correlation can reflect three channels: self-selection, higher physical productivity resulting from access to a larger variety of inputs, and quality upgrading based on high-quality imported intermediate inputs[…]