In 1996 Austria introduced a tax for the layoff of older workers, which was tightened in 2000. The regulation requires employers to pay a tax of up to 170 percent of the gross monthly income when they give notice to employees aged 50 or more. We use data from Austrian social security records to...

R&D expenditures of firms varies vastly between and within industries. In recent years a lot of theoretical and empirical studies attempted to explain the distribution of R&D expenditures. Four main factors repeatedly appeared in this literature: Firm size, market power, appropriability and...

We investigate whether the costs of job displacement differ between blue collar and white collar workers. In the short run earnings and employment losses are substantial for both groups but stronger for white collar workes. In the long run, there are only weak effects for blue collar workers but...

Employment termination in East Germany in the first nine months after unification is analyzed within a discrete hazard rate model with three absorbing states, namely short-time work, unemployment and non-participation. Estimation is based on a cohort of employed individuals in June 1990 and the...

Established theories in international business come to different conclusions when specifically applied to the analysis of the international activities of start-up companies in high-technology industries. Using a new dataset of 495 British and German start-ups operating in high-technology...

The importance and contribution of new technology-based Firms (NTBFs) to long term economic development is at the center of a controversial debate. This paper provides an overview of the current status of research on various issues concerning NTBFs in Germany. The issues covered include the...

The missing effect of investments of firms in information and communication technologies on productivity is studied by various recent papers (e.g. Oliner and Sichels 1994, Landauer 1995, Brynjolfsson and Hitt 1996). Several explanations are given for this missing link. Our paper deals with two...

This paper develops a three stage oligopoly game for R&D cooperation, R&D expenditure and product market competition. In the first stage, firms decide whether or not to conduct R&D in cooperation with other firms. In the second stage the level of R&D investment is determined. Finally, firms...