Using German establishment data, this paper examines the relationship between product market competition and the extent of employer provided training. We demonstrate that high product market competition is associated with increased training except when the competition is so severe as to threaten...

Does competitive pressure foster innovation? In addressing this important question, prior studies ignored a distinction between discrete innovation aiming at entirely new technology and continuous improvement consisting of numerous incremental improvements and modifications made upon the...

In this paper we empirically explore the "make-or-buy" decisions of peripheral services in manufacturing plants using detailed information on a data set from a new plant-level survey from 926 plants distributed in all manufacturing industries in Spain. In particular, survey respondents are asked...

Partnering with the Census we implement a new survey of "structured" management practices in 32,000 US manufacturing plants. We find an enormous dispersion of management practices across plants, with 40% of this variation across plants within the same firm. This management variation accounts for...