The traditional argument that shorter product cycles favor trade secret over patenting is reviewed. A game theoretic model provides an argument that shorter product cycles can induce firms to file more patent applications. The firms may be trapped in a prisoners' dilemma where all firms would...

Existing data sets on firm formations in Germany suffer from various shortcomings that prohibit sound analyses of new firms’ development over time. Therefore, the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), KfW Bankengruppe and Creditreform are cooperating to form a start-up panel for...

One of the most conspicuous features of mergers is that they come in waves that are correlated with increases in share prices and price/earnings ratios. We use a natural way to discriminate between pure stock market influences on firm decisions and other influences by examining merger patterns...

Contractual and regulatory provisions for access affect incentives to invest in an upgraded network and, in particular, a next-generation access network. Investment decisions are made under uncertainty and have to be made over time. This papers provides a framework for taking uncertainty, risk...

This paper studies the impact of process and product innovations introduced by firms on employment growth in these firms. A simple model that relates employment growth to process innovations and to the growth of sales separately due to innovative and unchanged products is developed and estimated...

Contrary to previous literature we hypothesize that interests of labor may well – like that of shareholders – aim at securing the long-run survival of the firm. Consequently, employee representatives on the supervisory board could well have an interest in increasing incentive-based...

This paper examines the reliance on ESG metrics in executive compensation contracts. In our sample of international publicly traded firms, a rapidly growing fraction incorporate ESG metrics in the compensation schemes of their top executives. Our analysis links the reliance on these metrics to...

This paper empirically investigates complementarities between different sources of research funding with regard to academic publishing. We find for a sample of UK engineering academics that competitive funding is associated with an increase in ex-post publications but that industry funding...

This paper analyses the relationship between past innovation output, competition, and future innovation input in a dynamic econometric setting. We distinguish two dimensions of competition that correspond to the concepts of product substitutability and entry barriers due to fixed costs. Based on...

Do academic scientists bring valuable human capital to the companies they found or join? If so, what are the particular skills that compose their human capital and how are these skills related to firm performance? This paper examines these questions using a particular group of academic...