This paper analyses the flexibility decision of firms. In particular we (a) ask whether the flexibility choice is influenced by market structure (concentration, market growth, ...), (b) compare the firms' actual choices with welfare maximising flexibility decisions (c) investigate the...

This paper compares technologies across space and time on the basis of factual and counterfactual substitution elasticities and argues that differences in estimated substitution elasticities should be decomposed into two counterfactual components. While the first component is designed to...

Bei der Modernisierung der Produktion setzen deutsche und amerikanische Firmen zumindest teilweise andere Schwerpunkte. Die deutschen Unternehmen favorisieren strategisch zu höheren Anteilen Technologie und Innovation sowie die Anpassung der Produkte an Kundenwünsche. Die US-Firmen...

Der Artikel faßt die Ergebnisse einer Erhebung über das Innovationsverhalten im Bereich von Produkten und Prozessen in 1305 Betrieben der Investitionsgüterindustrie zusammen, die vom Fraunhofer-Institut für Systemtechnik und Innovationsforschung (ISI), Karlsruhe, durchgeführt wurde....

This paper advances research on institutional work in market constitution processes. I show how purposive, coordinated action is organized under conditions of uncertainty through practices of rendering irreducible uncertainty tolerable. Building on recent developments in institutional theories...

During the last decades, a number of studies have been concerned with communication related to new product development. These have looked at either intra-organizational communication between departments or communication between new product development teams and external stakeholders such as...

This paper studies how changes in the complexity of the firms' production technologies affect wage differences between and within tasks. In a production process where tasks are complementary, the employer may have an incentive to pay higher wages when using more complex technologies because the...

This paper analyses the potential for productivity spillovers from inward foreign direct investment using administrative panel data on firms for Hungary. We hypothesise that the potential for spillovers is related to observable characteristics of the production process of foreign affiliates, and...

We analyze a model where firms chose a production technology which, together with some random event, determines the final emission level. We consider the coexistence of two alternative technologies: a "clean" technology, and a "dirty" technology. The environmental regulation is based on taxes...

We present a dynamic model where the probability of outsourcing production is increasing in the firm's expectation of technological change. As the pace of innovations in production technologies increases, the less time the firm has to amortize the sunk costs associated with purchasing and...