According to the pollution haven hypotheses differences in environmental regulation affect trade flows and plant location. Specifically, environmental stringency should decrease exports and increase imports of "dirty" goods. This paper estimates a gravity model to establish whether the...

We analyze the relationship between institutional quality and firm efficiency. Using rich data on firms in the European Union between 2005 and 2012, we show that high institutional quality lowers the share of persistently inefficiently used assets. The adverse effect of low institutional quality...

Pacts for employment and competitiveness are an integral component of the ongoing process of decentralization of collective bargaining in Germany, a phenomenon that has been hailed as key to that nation's economic resurgence. Yet little is known about the effects of pacts on firm performance....

The gravity literature has focused on distance, borders and contiguity to measure geography's impact on trade. We add value to this literature in terms of data, method and assessment of effects. First, we expand existing geographical databases by adding topographical features. We supply novel...

Using cross-country data from the European Company Survey, we investigate the relationship between workplace employee representation and five behavioral outcomes: strike incidence, the climate of industrial relations, sickness/absenteeism, employee motivation, and staff retention. The evidence...