In order to reduce unemployment, it is often recommended that industry-level wage bargaining in Germany should be replaced by a more decentralized system. This paper provides a critical assessment of the current wage bargaining institutions and reexamines the case for a more decentralized...

We analyze cooperation within a company setting in order to study the relationship between cooperative attitudes and financial as well as non-financial rewards. In total, 910 employees of a large software company participate in an incentivized online experiment. We observe high levels of...

In some countries around the world, the advantages of globalisation have been increasingly called into question recently. In particular, takeovers by foreign firms raise suspicions of technology theft and job cuts at the newly acquired local plant. By looking at Germany, as a large open economy,...

This study elucidates the mixed gamble confronting family firms when considering a related firm acquisition. The socioemotional and financial wealth trade-off associated with related firm acquisitions as well as their long-term horizon turns family firms more likely to undertake a related...

We study the economic consequences of anti-loss trafficking rules, which disallow the use of loss carry-forwards as tax shield after a substantial ownership change. Using staggered changes to these rules, we find that limiting the transfer of tax losses reduces the number of M&As with...

This study examines changes in block ownership for a large sample of listed and non-listed German firms. The frequency of block trading is similar to other countries, and the vast majority of block trades leads to changes in ultimate ownership (control transfers). Such changes are more likely...

This study provides new stylized facts on the determinants of corporate failure and acquisition in Germany. It also offers important lessons for the design of empirical studies. We show that firms experiencing failure or acquisition are significantly different from surviving firms on a number of...

Little is known about how socioeconomic characteristics of executive teams affect corporate governance in banking. Exploiting a unique dataset, we show how age, gender, and education composition of executive teams affect risk taking of financial institutions. First, we establish that age,...

Banks in bad financial shape are more likely to appoint executive directors from the outside than those in good shape. It is, however, not clear whether all of these appointments necessarily lead to the desired turnaround. We analyze the performance effects of new board members with external...

Increasing the participation of women in top-level corporate boards is high on the agenda of policymakers. Yet, we know little about director appointment dynamics and the drivers and impediments of women appointments. This study builds on organizational and group-level behavior theories and...