Applying a differences-in-differences strategy, I study the decentralization of university admission as a natural experiment. Is the centralized or decentralized procedure better suited to match prospective students to universities? The analysis uses administrative data on all students within...

Institutional early childhood education and care can be funded and delivered in various ways relying on both the public and the private sector. The provision of childcare ranges from public operation to mixed markets with public and private providers to considerably marketised systems with...

A number of recent studies and evidence for the existence of a persistent performance gap between multinational enterprises (MNE) and their domestic competitors. Therefore, the question arises whether successful firms become MNEs or whether going abroad improves home market performance. This...

This paper tests some of the predictions of recent advances in trade theory that have focused on different trade patterns of firms within the same sector. Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (2005) develop a model in which innate productivity differences between firms determine the degree of...

Most existing analyses on the gender wage gap (GWG) have neglected the establishment as a place where inequality between male and female employees arises and is maintained. The use of linked employee-employer data permits us to move beyond the individual and consider the importance of the...

This paper characterises establishments that pay higher seniority wages than their competitors. It tests whether seniority wages are paid on the basis of agency, human capital or efficiency wage considerations. A representative linked employeremployee panel and an innovative two-step estimation...

Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

Knowledge spillovers to competitors are regarded as an important aspect of the innovation process. While a company possibly benefits from incoming information on successful R&D conducted by other companies, a generally high probability of leakage of knowledge in an industry will negatively...

Most of the literature addressing multiple banking assumes equal financing shares. However, unequal, concentrated or asymmetric bank borrowing is widespread. This paper investigates the determinants of creditor concentration for German firms using a comprehensive bank-firm level dataset for the...

This study provides empirical evidence verifying the theory of price discovery for Eastern European enterprises based on their cross-listing on Western European exchanges. Despite the fact that the crosslisting behavior of companies has been analyzed very actively since the mid-70s, many...