Codetermination can be regarded as an extreme regulatory intervention of the legislator in the labor market which might affect the efficiency of production and the bargaining power of labor. Based on a model that covers both efficient bargaining and employment bargaining a simple equation is...

The theoretical discussion concerning the question whether the incumbent or the (potential) entrant invests more into R&D has attracted considerable interest. This paper reports the results of an empirical study on this question using data of about 3500 German firms over the years 1992 to 1995....

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...

We estimate the effect of R&D spillovers on sales realized by products new to the firm (imitation) and new to the market (innovation). It turns out that spillovers from rivals lead to more imitation, while inputs from customers and research institutions enhance original innovation.

With the purpose to reduce winter unemployment and to promote all-season employment in the constructions sector, Germany maintains an extensive bad weather allowance system. Since the mid 1990s, these regulations have been subject to several reforms that resemble the range of approaches for...

We estimate the effects of R&D on firms' credit ratings and on financial distress. The main purpose is the comparison of firms in Western Germany and Eastern Germany as a transitional economy. Innovative activity has a positive impact on firm value proxied by ratings in Western Germany, but a...

The paper analyses the potential impact of stock market developments on lending behaviour from different perspectives. First we scrutinize the impact of stock market movements on the banks’ and on the borrowers’ balance sheets. Subsequently we estimate aggregate credit supply and demand...

We estimate the determinants of various types of product innovation. Knowledge spillovers from rivals have a positive impact on incremental innovations. This impact is largely independent of the participation in R&D cooperations. Spillovers exert no such independent influence on drastic...

In light of nonstationary search theory (van den Berg, 1990), this paper estimates the effects of benefit entitlement periods and the size of unemployment benefits on unemployment durations and post{unemployment earnings in West Germany. For the unemployment duration, we estimate censored...