Empirical investigations with enterprise level data from official statistics often use the averagewage as a proxy variable for the qualification of the workforce, mostly due to the lack ofdetailed information on the qualification of the employees. This paper uses unique newlyavailable data for...

Using data on team assignment and weekly output for all weavers in an urban Chinese textilefirm between April 2003 and March 2004, this paper studies a) how randomly assignedteammates affect an individual worker’s behavior under a tournament-style incentive scheme,and b) how such effects...

This paper documents the relationship between foreign ownership and firm survival forenterprises in Germany using unique tailor-made new representative data that mergeinformation from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices, from administrative datacollected by the Tax Authorities and from...

This paper contributes to the literature on international firm activities and firm performance byproviding the first evidence on the link of productivity and both exports and foreign directinvestment (fdi) in services firms from a highly developed country. It uses unique new datafrom Germany -...

This paper explores theoretically and empirically potentially important yet often-neglectedlinkage between task coordination within the organization and the structure of organizationand bundling of HRMPs (Human Resource Management Practices). In so doing, we alsoprovide fresh insights on the...

While it is a stylized fact that exporting firms pay higher wages than non-exporting firms, the direction of the link between exporting and wages is less clear. Using a rich set of German linked employer-employee panel data we follow over time plants that start to export. We show that the...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? In addressing this important question, priorstudies ignored a distinction between discrete innovation aiming at entirely new technologyand continuous improvement consisting of numerous incremental improvements andmodifications made upon the existing...

By using a large new panel of individual data, including objective measures of workerperformance, we provide some of the most rigorous evidence to date on several relateddimensions of enduring debates surrounding upward-sloping earnings-tenure profiles...

To investigate the size and the timing of the direct impact of participatory arrangements onbusiness performance, we assemble and analyze extraordinary daily data – for rejection,production and downtime rates for all operators in a single plant during a 35 month period,more than 77,000...

A recent survey of 54 micro-econometric studies reveals that exporting firms are moreproductive than non-exporters. On the other hand, previous empirical studies show thatexporting does not necessarily improve productivity. One possible reason for this result isthat most previous studies are...