Social incentives like employee awards are widespread in the corporate sector and may be important instruments for solving agency problems. To date, we have little understanding of their effect on behavior. Unique panel data from the call center of a Fortune 500 financial services provider allow...

Economic theory suggests that performance pay may serve as an effective screening device to attract productive agents. The existing evidence on the self-selection of agents is largely limited to job tasks where performance is driven by routine, well-defined procedures. This study presents...

We manipulate workers' perceived meaning of a job in a field experiment. Half of the workers are informed that their job is important, the other half are told that their job is of no relevance. Results show that workers exert more effort when meaning is high, corroborating previous findings on...

This paper analyses fundamental location factors for the financial industry by investigating the economic significance of market participants' assessments of location factors and country-specific characteristics over time. A unique data set allows studying the locational attractiveness of...

There is some controversy on the key sources of success in the private equity model and on how this business model affects the portfolio companies. We investigate financial distress risks of European companies around the buyout event in the period between 2000 and 2008. In addition, we analyze...

Der deutsche Markt für Beteiligungskapital ist ein vergleichsweise junger Markt, so dass nur wenig Wissen bezüglich der Qualität der von den VCG geleisteten Managementunterstützung besteht. Ziel der Studie ist es, den Beitrag der VCG zum Wachstum und Überleben ihrer Portfoliounternehmen...

With the establishment of the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (BaFin) in May 2002 Germany followed the trend towards integrated financial supervision. The main reason for unification of supervision is the growing integration of financial sectors leading to the blurring of...

This paper focuses on the pre-establishment period of start-ups in industrial districts. The industrial architecture is what I call a "rationed agglomeration" in which some entrepreneurs gather around an established firm while other entrepreneurs in the same business stand alone. In a rationed...

In this paper, we analyze whether the domiciliation decision of mutual funds has an impact on fund fees. To explain the fee price-setting of mutual funds, we consider characteristics specific to funds, fund companies, and countries. We find that fees vary considerably across fund types and...

We use a unique matched tax return-financial statement data set to examine the magnitude and sources of book-tax differences in Germany. For the first time, the data set enables us to evaluate the extent to which financial and tax accounting differ in Germany in the most accurate manner. Despite...