For most multi-period decision-making problems, it is generally well-accepted that the influence of information about later periods on the optimal decision in the current period reduces as we move farther into the future. If and when this influence reduces to zero, the corresponding problem...

Recent years have witnessed an enormous amount of reorganization of the corporate sector in the US and in Europe. This paper examines the role of market competition for this trend in corporate reorganization. We find that at intermediate levels of competition the CEO of the corporation decides...

The compensation of executive board members in Germany has become a highly controversial topic since Vodafone's hostile takeover of Mannesmann in 2000 and it is again in the spotlight since the outbreak of the financial crisis of 2009. Based on unique panel data evidence of the 500 largest firms...

In an influential paper Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) argue that the evidence on the international disparity in per-capita income levels and growth rates is consistent with a standard Solow model, once it has been augmented to include human capital as an accumulable factor. In a study on...

Many people in the European Union fear that Eastern Enlargement will lead to major job losses. More recently, these fears about job losses have extended to high skill labor and IT jobs. The paper examines with new firm level data whether these fears are justified for the two neighboring...