For firms acting in technological niches the expansion into foreign markets can be a way to increase sales and to thus to recover initial sunk costs over a shorter time frame. Our research, based on survey data for nearly 600 British and German high-tech start-ups, examines whether...

This paper analyzes the influence of the structure of collective wage bargaining on direct investment abroad. A wage negotiations model shows that high productive firms benefit from centralized bargaining and invest therefore less abroad than under dezentralized bargaining. An empirical study...

This work offers new insights into the determinants of service offshoring across countries and across service industries. Combining different data sources over the 2006-2009 period, I find that certain country characteristics affect offshoring costs for all services, while the effects of other...

More than 25 years after German reunification, key economic indicators for households living in eastern German regions are still below the western German levels. This particularly holds for private net wealth, which reaches only about 40% of the western German level. However, a more granular...

The paper deals with the question which determinants can explain regional differences in the number of start-ups in Austrian and Western German districts when observing the business related service sector. We separate our sample in firms operating in knowledge intensive sectors and start-ups...

In the context of EMU fiscal equalization schemes have been proposed as a means to stabilize regions against asymmetric shocks. A theoretical analysis shows that besides reducing the cross-sectional income variance the redistributive element of fiscal equalization causes incentive effects for...