From a microeconomic perspective competition between firms has been duely discussed. Extending microeconomic concepts to a macroeconomic level and considering competition between countries becomes more complex. The complexity issues is tackled in this study by extending a methodology developed...

This paper empirically studies the relationship between different compliance strategies concerning environmental legislation and intentions of entrepreneurs to increase their firms’ material and energy efficiency in the next two years. Moreover, I examine the relationship between such...

In the long history of rising and persistent unemployment in Europe almost all institutions – employment protection legislation, unions, wages, wage structure, unemployment insurance, etc. – have been alleged and found guilty to have caused this tragic development at some point in time....

The current crisis is like an earthquake for the theoretical foundations of economic policies, which have guided governments and central banks for the last few decades. The efficient market hypothesis and its application to labor markets –“natural rate theory”- dominated interpretations of...

This paper studies the relationship between trade credit and innovation. While trade credit is well researched in the finance literature, its link to innovation has been neglected in prior research. We argue that innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are more likely to use trade...

This paper highlights the role of financial development in producing innovative products and services. The Venture Capitalists (VCs) plays a crucial role for the realization of product innovation and service innovation. Especially young entrepreneurs face the problem of financial constraints if...

This paper analyzes the link between structural change, growth and bazaar effects in the context of open economies. At first we consider the theoretical basis of structural change and discuss the interdependencies between trade, foreign direct investment and innovation dynamics. The empirical...

This study explores the relationship between energy and material efficiency innovations (EMEIs) and innovation strategies employed by manufacturing firms to develop their process innovations. Firms may mainly develop process innovations in-house, let them mainly develop by other enterprises or...

Analyzing prices of truly homogenous consumer goods sold in Euroland, we find significant price convergence after the Euro cash changeover in 2002. The deviation of national log prices from the mean log price of the same product is much narrower with the Euro than before. We observe Sigma and...

For a sample of 1243 European companies, we analyse the link between firm type and foreign direct investment (FDI) locations. We find substantial empirical evidence that being a family firm does not only affect the overall propensity for FDI but that this effect is also specific to target...