This paper investigates the factors that explain the level and dynamics of manufacturing firm productive efficiency. In our empirical analysis, we use a unique sample of about 39,000 firms in 256 industries from the German Cost Structure Census over the years 1992-2005. We estimate the...

After 20 years of transition from an economy integrated in an exchange scheme of planned economies towards an open market economy based on the ideas of competition, we ask whether East German firms succeeded in finding their place in the international division of labour. We concentrate on the...

This paper addresses the relationship between the utilization of temporary agency workers by firms and their competitiveness measured by unit labor costs, using a rich, newly built, data set of German manufacturing enterprises. The analysis is conducted by applying different panel data models...

This paper investigates to what extent the R&D behavior of manufacturing companies was influenced by the 2008/09 crisis. Based on a broad official data set for German manufacturing companies, only a few companies that engaged in R&D during 2008 gave it up in the following year. Some companies...

This paper analyses how international outsourcing has affected the relative demand for low skilled workers in Germany during the 1990s. In contrast to previous empirical work, the single elements of the input-output-matrix are used to disentangle international outsourcing and trade in final...

Using time-series cross-section data from the manufacturing sector of the 11 West German "Bundesländer" (Federal States) from 1970 to 1996, I examine the impact of public capital on private production. My econometric analysis explicitly takes into account four of the most frequent specification...

Environmental taxation very often comprises special provisions for parts of the business sector in order to attenuate effects on competitiveness of emissionintensive activities. This paper discusses motives, alternative designs and criteria for the evaluation of such safeguards and analyzes if...

This paper analyzes the distribution of technical efficiency within manufacturing industries. Using a representative sample of 35,000 firms in 255 industries of the German cost structure census, technical efficiencies are estimated by applying a deterministic frontier production function with...

Boone (2008a) proposes a new competition measure based on Relative Profit Differences (RPD) with superior theoretical properties. However, the empirical applicability and robust-ness of the Boone-Indicator is still unknown. This paper aims to address that question. Using a rich, newly built,...

We analyze whether start-up rates in different industries systematically change with business cycle variables. Using a unique data set at the industry level, we mostly find correlations that are consistent with counter-cyclical influences of the business cycle on entries in both innovative and...