We present a structural framework for the evaluation of public policies intended to increase job search intensity. Most of the literature defines search intensity as a scalar that influences the arrival rate of job offers; here we treat it as the number of job applications that workers send out....

This paper analyzes the structure of hiring costs of skilled workers in Germany. Using detailed and representative firm-level data on recruitment and adaptation costs of new hires, we find that average hiring costs amount to more than 8 weeks of wage payments (4,700 Euros). The structure of...

Our analysis of the survival of firms leads to the important result that the hypotheses about differences between various industries in the life duration of new firms and about the importance of the region of location for the probability of survival are confirmed. Many more enterprises are...

This survey paper aims at critically discussing the recent literature on firm formation and survival and the growth of new-born firms. The basic purpose is to single out the microeconomic entrepreneurial foundations of industrial dynamics (entry and exit) and to characterise the founder’s...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? In addressing this important question, prior studies ignored a distinction between discrete innovation aiming at entirely new technology and continuous improvement consisting of numerous incremental improvements and modifications made upon the...

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the recent empirical contributions that use cross country data to study the effect of product market regulation and reform on a country’s macroeconomic performance. After a brief review of the theoretical literature and of...

We model decisions with respect to formality or informality for entrepreneurs in a new industry for a developing economy. We show that informality allows a leader to explore, without significant sunk costs, the potential profitability of the industry; that is, informality may be a stepping...

Many start-ups chose to compete with incumbent firms using one of two generic strategies: cost leadership or differentiation. Our study demonstrates how this choice depends on whether the startup was founded out of necessity. Our results, based on a representative data set of 4,568 German...

We establish the existence of strong media slant against foreign owners. Using a unique data set from nation-wide distributed quality newspapers in Germany, we find that a foreign firm that downsizes in Germany receives almost twice as much attention than a domestic firm. This quantitative slant...

Strategy research often aims to empirically establish a causal relationship between an independent variable and a dependent variable such as firm performance. For many important strategy research questions, however, traditional empirical techniques are not sufficient to establish causal effects...