This paper argues that mainstream economic the- ory, far from providing an indisputable plea in favor of shareholder value-maximization, o ers striking arguments showing quite the opposite: pro t maximization cannot be a legitimate prioritar- ian goal for private rms. This opens the door for a...

This paper argues that mainstream economic theory, far from providing an indisputable plea in favor of shareholder value-maximization, offers striking arguments showing quite the opposite : profit-maximization cannot be a legitimate goal for private firms. This opens the door for a widening of a...

Contrary to the prognosis derived from the variety of capitalism literature, since the mid-90s the significant restructuring of large German corporations in the direction of shareholder value seems to have been compatible with the persistence of a genuine configuration of industrial relations,...

In the context of the current financial crisis, when more companies are facing bankruptcy or insolvency, the paper aims to find methods to identify distressed firms by using financial ratios. The study will focus on identifying a group of Romanian listed companies, for which financial data for...

This paper offers many new insights into the processes of firm growth by applying a vector autoregression (VAR) model to longitudinal panel data on French manufacturing firms. We observe the co-evolution of key variables such as growth of employment, sales, gross operating surplus and labour...

Complicated neoclassical models predict that if investment is sensitive to current financial performance, this is a sign that something is "wrong" and is to be regarded as a problem for policy. Evolutionary theory, on the other hand, refers to the principle of "growth of the fitter" to explain...

The issue of technological unemployment receives perennial popular attention. Although there are previous empirical investigations that have focused on the relationship between innovation and employment, the originality of our approach lies in our choice of method. We focus on four 2-digit...

Innovation is commonly seen as the principal engine of economic development. In this paper, we investigate the microfoundations of economic growth by relating innovation to sales growth at the firm-level, for incumbent firms in four «complex technology» sectors. The average firm, which...

Serial correlation in annual growth rates carries a lot of information on growth processes - it allows us to directly observe firm performance as well as to test hypotheses. Using a 7-year balanced panel of 10 000 French manufacturing firms, we observe that small firms typically are subject to...

We survey the phenomenon of the growth of firms drawing on literature from economics, management and sociology. We begin with a review of empirical "stylised facts" before discussing theoretical contributions. Firm growth is characterized by a predominant stochastic element, making it difficult...