This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of non-financial firms' leverage and macroeconomic uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts that as macroeconomic uncertainty increases the firm will decrease its optimal level of...

This paper analyzes the distribution of technical efficiency within manufacturing industries. Using a representative sample of 35,000 firms in 255 industries of the German cost structure census, technical efficiencies are estimated by applying a deterministic frontier production function with...

Using micro-level panel data of about 35,000 firms from the German Cost Structure Census, we analyze the differences of technical efficiency across industries. Technical efficiency is estimated by firms' fixed effects. One striking result is that the distribution of technical efficiency across...

This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to the estimation of the contribution of transport infrastructure accumulation to regional growth. We model explicitly the political-economy process driving infrastructure investments; in doing so, we eliminate a potential source of bias in...

The analysis of regional income and productivity differences in the European Union (EU) has some tradition. The theoretical framework of most empirical studies on these subjects is the neoclassical growth model. Thus, research has focussed on convergence of income and productivity among EU...

In this paper, we investigate the link between optimal level of leverage and macroeconomic uncertainty. Using the model of firm's value maximization, we show that as macroeconomic uncertainty increases, captured by an increase in the variability of industrial production or inflation, firms...

Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. One of the “stylised facts” from the empirical literature is that the process of absolute convergence observed for decades has slowed down or even petered out during...

Spending on productive infrastructure is seen as an important contributor to long term economic growth. Several authors have documented a downward trend in public investment during the last three decades and warned about its possible detrimental effects on the economy. A not well-realized fact...