COVID-19 hit firms by surprise. In a high frequency, representative panel of German firms, the business outlook declined and business uncertainty increased only when the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic led to domestic policy changes: The announcement of nation-wide school closures on March 13...

In this paper, we zoom in on the firm level of German merchandise foreign trade, using a novel data base with information on the export and import value by firm, country, product and year for the period 2011-2019. Problems arising from the consolidated reporting of taxable entities and the...

This paper provides a theory and firm-level evidence on the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs in a model of taxes and corporate governance. The theory explains how the incorporation decision of entrepreneurs is driven by taxation (corporate and personal income taxes), corporate...

We investigate the link between productivity of firms and their sourcing behavior. Following Antràs & Helpman (2004) we distinguish between domestic and foreign sourcing, as well as between outsourcing and vertical integration. A firm's choice is driven by a hold-up problem caused by lack of...

This paper derives a new effect of trade liberalisation on the quality of the environment. We show that in the presence of heterogeneous firms the aggregate volume of emissions is influenced not only by the long-established scale effect, but also by a reallocation effect resulting from an...

We use survey responses by firms to examine the firm-level determinants and effects of political influence, their perception of corruption and prevalence of bribe paying. We find that: (a) measures of political influence and corruption/bribes are uncorrelated at the firm level; (b) firms that...

Sick workers in many countries receive sick pay during their illness-related absences from the workplace. In several countries, the social security system insures firms against their workers' sickness absences. However, this insurance may create moral hazard problems for firms, leading to the...

We examine the quantitative predictions of heterogeneous firm models à la Melitz (2003) in the context of the Canada - US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) of 1989. We compute predicted increases in trade flows and measured productivity across a range of standard models and compare them to the...

In many countries, the legal system or social norms ensure that firms are stakeholder oriented. We analyze the advantages and disadvantages of stakeholder-oriented firms that are concerned with employees and suppliers compared to shareholder-oriented firms in a model of imperfect competition....