Climate change related risks impact and challenge the private sector in many different ways. This also applies to risk drivers like a companies' reputation and a changing consumer behavior. Since significant risk drivers for companies differ just as much as companies themselves, a sector...

This paper analyses the Relative Age Effect (RAE) in German elite youth soccer academies. We examine the efficiency of talent selection and the returns to training. Our results indicate a strong effect of players' birth dates on their probability of getting selected - and, thus, a waste of...

Crinò and Epifani (2012) report and discuss two empirical regularities they find in a representative sample of Italian manufacturing firms. First, there is a negative correlation between firms' productivity and their export share to low-income destinations. Second, there is a negative...

This paper deploys a dynamic extension of the Melitz (2003) model to generate predictions on export market exit and firm survival in a setting where firms endogenously make exit decisions. The central driver of the model dynamics is the inclusion of exogenous economy wide technological progress....

This paper uses a unique newly constructed data set to investigate for the first time the link between credit constraints and the extensive margins of exports in Germany, one of the leading actors on the international market for goods. In line with theoretical considerations and comparable...

This paper examines the relationship between intra-firm wage dispersion and establishments' employment in a theoretical analysis and empirical regressions using German "Linked Employer-Employee Data from the IAB" (LIAB) for the years of 1996 through 2008. Therefore, fractional probit models for...

In empirical studies it often happens that some variables for some units are far away from the other observations in the sample. These extreme observations, or outliers, often have a large impact on the results of statistical analyses – conclusions based on a sample with and without these...

Feenstra and Ma (2008) develop a monopolistic competition model where firms choose their optimal product scope by balancing the profits from a new variety against the costs of "cannibalizing" sales of existing varieties. While more productive firms always have a higher market share, there is no...

This study uses tailor made enterprise level data from various sources for firms from manufacturing industries to test for the link between credit constraints, measured by a credit rating score provided by a leading credit rating agency, and imports in Germany for the first time. We find...

Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for 2006, I test recent theoretical predictions on social comparisons influencing individual Body Mass Index (BMI). I find that in particular the average BMI of individuals in the same county-age-gender-cell as the respective...