Purpose – Given the ongoing demographic change in European countries, this paper aims to explore empirically the link between age structures of employees in firms and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – Based on theoretical considerations, the paper examines the link between both...

Purpose: Career interruptions of employees imply important issues for both firms and individuals, including a possibly lower compensation after returning to a job. Different compensation components are explored, as bonus payments frequently complement fixed salaries for many employees, making...

Summary It is often argued in economics that building a reputation for trustworthiness could help individuals or firms to mitigate or even overcome problems of contractual incompleteness. In this paper, we use data from the German eBay website to test whether a seller’s bad reputation has an...

Summary Based on two representative samples of employees, the German Socio Economic Panel and the European Social Survey, we explore the relation between certain measures of control in employment relationships (i. e. working time regulations, use of performance appraisal systems, monitoring by...

A main prediction of agency theory is the well known risk-incentive trade-off. Incentive contracts should be found in environments with little uncertainty and for agents with low degrees of risk aversion. There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the first trade-off. Due to lack of...

In economic approaches it is often argued that reputation considerations influence the behavior of individuals or firms and that reputation influences the outcome of markets. Empirical evidence is rare though. In this contribution we argue that a positive reputation of sellers should have an...

Purpose – Given the ongoing demographic change in European countries, this paper aims to explore empirically the link between age structures of employees in firms and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – Based on theoretical considerations, the paper examines the link between both...