This paper shows the strategic aspects of international outsourcing in a duopolistic market. Due to different costs of integrated production and outsourcing, the choice of a firm influences the strategy of the competitor via the output price. Therefore, the resulting market constellation depends...

Some companies engage in mass fundraising - where thousands of recipients are asked to make small donations - in addition to their core business. Via a corpo-rate social responsibility (CSR) channel this may increase sales. However, recent research uncovered significant "ask avoidance" which, if...

This paper examines the reliance on ESG metrics in executive compensation contracts. In our sample of international publicly traded firms, a rapidly growing fraction incorporate ESG metrics in the compensation schemes of their top executives. Our analysis links the reliance on these metrics to...

Firm ownership is a major determinant for the economic performance of firms, and emissions of pollutants are often by-products of industrial production. We investigate the impact of ownership on pollutant emissions of firms and their in- dustrial facilities in Europe jointly with their output,...

We demonstrate how the incentives of firms that partially own their suppliers or customers to foreclose rivals depend on how the partial owner can extract profits from the target. Compared to a fully vertically integrated firm, a partial owner may obtain only a share of the target's profit but...

Several papers find a positive association between a bank's equity stake in a borrowing firm and lending to that firm. While such a positive cross-sectional correlation may be due to equity stakes benefiting lending, it may also be driven by endogeneity. To distinguish the two, we study a German...

In the light of the recent financial crisis, the discussion on the nature of runs and on the stabilizing role of liquidity holdings has intensified. This paper explores the cash management conducted by German open-end equity funds for the period between 2005 and 2010. Since ownership structures...

This paper analyses the impact of financial frictions on markup adjustments at the firm level. We use a rich panel data set that matches information on banking relationships with firm-level data. By relying on insights from recent contributions in the literature, we obtain exogenous credit...

Based on survey responses from more than 1,700 managers in Germany, this study elicits employers’ perceptions of working from home during COVID-19 and their long-term expectations for the time after the pandemic. Based on employers’ forecasts of the share of employees working from home...