We analyze the performance of firms in the German business-related services sector. A quarterly business survey provides the panel data base of our study. Firm performance is measured by the survey respondents' ordinal indication of their changes in total sales. We use a firstorder Markov chain...

We present a new method for imposing and testing concavity of a cost function using asymptotic least squares, which can easily be implemented even for cost functions which are nonlinear in parameters. We provide an illustration on the basis of a (generalized) Box-Cox cost function with six...

In this paper, it is argued that ICT investment is closely linked with complementary innovations and most productive in firms with innovative experience. In an analysis based on firm-level panel data covering the period 1994-99, system GMM estimates for an extended production function framework...