Using data on executive compensation for the German chemical industry, we investigate the relevance of two theoretical approaches that focus on bonuses as part of a long term wage policy of a firm. The first approach argues that explicit bonuses serve as substitutes for implicit career concerns....

Academic careers in Germany have been under debate for a while. We conduct a survey among postdocs in Germany, to analyze the perceptions and attitudes of postdocs regarding their research incentives, their working conditions, and their career prospects. We conceptualize the career prospects of...

This paper shows that top management structures in large US firms radically changed since the mid-1980s. While the number of managers reporting directly to the CEO doubled, the growth was driven primarily by functional managers rather than general managers. Using panel data on senior management...

Recent studies indicate that firms often outsource standard and simple tasks, while keeping complex and important inputs inside their boundaries. This observation is difficult to reconcile with the property rights approach of the firm, which suggests that important components should be...

What is the optimal form of firm organization during "bad times"? Using two large micro datasets on firm decentralization from US administrative data and 10 OECD countries, we find that firms that delegated more power from the Central Headquarters to local plant managers prior to the Great...

Labor turnover creates longer term career concerns incentives that motivate employees in addition to the short term monetary incentives provided by the current employer. We analyze how these incentives interact and derive implications for the design of incentive contracts and organizational...

The request for a strengthening of academic research at the German economic researchinstitutes by the German Science Council more than a decade ago was founded on thecrucial insight that sound policy advice - the traditional task of the institutes - can only beguaranteed in the long term if it...

The aim of the current paper is to estimate the need for new PhDs in the Estonian academicsector for the 5-year period 2007-2012 using a survey of employers, such as universities,institutions of applied higher education and research institutes. The doctoral workforce in allcountries around the...

The literature has pointed to different causes to explain the productivity gap between Europe and United States in the last decades. This paper tests the hypothesis that the lower European productivity performance in comparison with the US can be explained not only by a lower level of corporate...

The globalization of R&D activities has continued its growth path as companies are increasingly trying to capture knowledge and market opportunities internationally. The rapid evolution of national economies and the ways to conduct knowledge-intensive businesses has led researchers and analysts...