We analyze the wage effects of employment breaks of women entering motherhood using a novel within-firm matching approach where mothers? wages upon return to the job are compared with those of their female colleagues within the same firm. Using an administrative German data set we investigate...

This paper analyzes the effects of public R&D subsidies on R&D expenditure in the German manufacturing sector. The focus is on the question whether public R&D funding stimulates or crowds out private investment. Cross sectional data at the firm level is used. By apllying parametric and...

We investigate different techniques to assess the gender pay gap in five EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom), focusing on self-selection into market work. Results show that selectivity correction has an impact on both wage estimates and wage gap decomposition. If...

In this paper we assess the impact of flexible work time schedules on firm efficiency using representative establishment data for Germany. Following the approach by Battese and Coelli (1995), we estimate a stochastic production frontier and the determinants of technical efficiency...

In the context of increasing globalization of markets, merger and acquisition activities in the 1990s are said to be driven by reorganization processes with respect to concentration on firms? core competencies in order to increase or maintain market power in international markets. This paper...

This paper tests some of the predictions of recent advances in trade theory that have focused on different trade patterns of firms within the same sector. Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (2005) develop a model in which innate productivity differences between firms determine the degree of...