We examine how cross-country differences in product, capital, and labor market competition, and earnings management affect mean reversion in accounting return on assets. Using a sample of 48,465 unique firms from 49 countries, we find that accounting returns mean revert faster in countries where...

During the last years more and more discussions came up about the contribution of technology-oriented and technology-intensive industries for the economic development and employment. One reason for these contradictory evaluations of technology-intensive industries can be attributed to different...

In this paper, we report results of an ongoing empirical analysis of firm dynamics in East Germany. After discussing specifics of a newly available data set with information on more than 100.000 firms, we analyze patterns of business starts and failures. Furthermore, we present preliminary...

This study investigates the determinants of changes in corporate ownership and firm failure, taking into account different types of sellers and buyers of control blocks. For a large panel of German corporations we find that firms are more likely to fail or to be sold when performance is poor,...

We examine the effect of mandated measurement and peer disclosure of new information on the persistence of performance improvements in a setting without performance incentives. Value of information (VOI) theory posits that information can improve the accuracy of posterior beliefs and thereby...

We investigate the relation between corporate performance and overall economic growth in the United States. In particular, we focus on the impact of the U.S. corporate tax regime on this relation. Exploiting time-series variation and a tax shock, we document that the relatively higher corporate...