We investigate the relationship between corporate and country sustainability on the cost of bank loans. We look into 470 loan agreements signed between 2005 and 2012 with borrowers based on 28 different countries across the world and operating in all major industries. Our principal findings...

There are noticeable differences between the roles that various forms of credit financing play in family businesses and in other businesses. Family businesses take out more often bank loans specifically to finance investments and innovations, and they particularly often resort to the short-term...

In dieser Studie werden auf Basis des Mikrozensus die soziodemographische Struktur sowie die Tätigkeitsfelder der Ingenieure und Facharbeiter mit den typischen Berufen des Maschinen- und Anlagenbaus analysiert. Die Erwerbsquote der Ingenieure ist in den Jahren zwischen 1991 und 1995 gesunken,...

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...

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...

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...

The literature on within-firm organizational change and productivity suggests that firms can make more efficient use of certain technologies if complementary forms of organization are adopted. This issue may be of even greater importance for the case of greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement...

In this paper, transaction costs in the EU emissions trading scheme (EU ETS) are examined empirically based on survey data from German companies. Transaction costs from measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) of emissions, permit trading and general informational costs are considered....

In this paper I analyse how individuals match for for the purpose of setting up a new firm. As a theoretical basis I use the O-ring theory introduced by Kremer (1993) and applied to new firms by Fabel (2004). The O-ring theory predicts that individuals segregate between firms according to their...

Ein Berater erfüllt einerseits die Rolle des Wissensvermittlers, andererseits kann er die Funktion übernehmen, bestehende Probleme und geplante Maßnahmen verschiedenen Interessensgruppen gegenüber zu legitimeren. Dieser Artikel zeigt empirische Evidenz für die Rolle des IT-Beraters auf...