To improve their competitiveness the companies aim to increase the funds available to finance the necessary investments. In order to reduce wage costs company-specific deviations from industry-level wage contracts are concluded. Company-level pacts between the management and the works council...

Using data on team assignment and weekly output for all weavers in an urban Chinese textilefirm between April 2003 and March 2004, this paper studies a) how randomly assignedteammates affect an individual worker’s behavior under a tournament-style incentive scheme,and b) how such effects...

Using firm-level data from nine developing countries we demonstrate that (a) certain institutions like restrictive labour market regulations that are considered to be bad for economic growth might be beneficial for production efficiency, whereas (b) good business environment which is considered...

Using data on team assignment and weekly output for all weavers in an urban Chinese textile firm between April 2003 and March 2004, this paper studies a) how randomly assigned teammates affect an individual worker's behavior under a tournament-style incentive scheme, and b) how such effects...

Business support policies designed to raise productivity and employment are commonworldwide, but rigorous micro-econometric evaluation of their causal effects is rare. Weexploit multiple changes in the area-specific eligibility criteria for a major program to supportmanufacturing jobs...

This paper documents the relationship between foreign ownership and firm survival forenterprises in Germany using unique tailor-made new representative data that mergeinformation from surveys performed by the Statistical Offices, from administrative datacollected by the Tax Authorities and from...

Do the short and medium term adjustment costs associated with trade liberalization influenceschooling and child labor decisions? We examine this question in the context of India's 1991tariff reforms. Overall, in the 1990s, rural India experienced a dramatic increase in schoolingand decline in...

Working time account is an organization tool that allows firms smoothing their demand for hours employed. Descriptive literature suggests that working time accounts reduce turnover and inhibit increase in unemployment during recessions. In a model of optimal choice of hours by a firm I show that...

Because accountability may improve the comparability that is compromised by lenient grading, we compare exit exam outcomes in the same schools before and after a policy change that increased teacher accountability by anchoring grading scales. In particular, using a large administrative dataset...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between a firm's R&D expenditures considered as an investment in knowledge, and its productivity, looking at sectoral peculiarities which may emerge; to this end, we use a large unique longitudinal database consisting of 1,809 US and...