We present evidence on venture capitalists' (VCs) impact on turnover of executives for a sample of nearly 47,000 German high-tech start-ups between 1995 and 2004. We confirm that the presence of VCs increases the probability of a change in the initial executive team. Additionally, we take a...

This article explores the propensity to patent in the light of the disclosure effect. Unlike earlier approaches concerned with the patenting decision, we take into account that a disclosure effect may decrease the merits of patenting by facilitating inventing around the patent for competitors....

Germany, as most other European countries, has been plagued by a persistently high level of long-term unemployment since the early 1980's. In contrast, long-term unemployment is much less of a problem in the United States. One potential reason for the different structure of unemployment relates...

This paper analyses the developments in the returns to education in West Germany for the period from 1984 to 1997. Based on simple Mincer-type wage equations, we estimate a return of about 8% for men and 10% for women, and these returns have remained remarkably stable over the period. On the...

Social assistance and unemployment assistance, which provide means tested income support (social welfare) without pre-specified time limits, are viewed as one important reason for the persistently high level of unemployment in Germany by many economists. In order to increase work incentives and,...

The sensitivity of innovation activities with respect to the business cycle is often assumed to be small. In this paper the hypothesis on cyclical dependence of innovation activities is tested for firms in the German manufacturing, and additionally for SMEs. To this end firms’ innovation...

Barriers to entry are regarded as major impediments to the working of markets. Entry must not necessarily actually take place - the perceived threat of entry may encourage incumbent firms to behave as if they are in a competitive market, even if they are not. We present empirical evidence on...

Theory predicts a positive relationship between market concentration and profitability in most scenarios. In empirical work, however, this relation is frequently not found or only a weak connection is observed. We compare the performance of concentration and market share variables, which are...

This paper follows up recent work on the relationship between (un-)employment and wage effects of social security financing undertaken by the OECD Jobs Study. Based on a simple macroeconometric model of the labour market, I investigate whether the peculiar OECD results for Germany on the...