This paper studies the aggregate substitution and expansion effects triggered by changes in input prices, in a context where firms supply a homogenous commodity and compete in quantities à la Cournot. We derive a sufficient condition for the existence of a Cournot equilibrium and show that this...

We focus on one of the core competitive capabilities of modern firms: the ability to deliver successful innovations in a globalized environment. Companies literally find themselves confronted with a world of ideas. The challenge remains to decide which impulses should be on top of the list and...

Price adjustments, particularly the cost pass-through relationships, are at the core of the analysis on how asymmetric climate change policy initiates two channels of carbon leakage: (decreasing) market shares and profit margins. Using advanced time-series techniques, this paper explores the...

This paper investigates the effects of the EU Environmental Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS) on environmental innovations and competitiveness in German facilities. It comprises twelve in-depth case studies and telephone interviews with 1277 EMAS-validated facilities. The surveys show a...

We examine impacts of different types of environmental innovations on firm profits. Following Porter’s (1991) hypothesis that environmental regulation can improve firms’ competitiveness we distinguish regulation induced and voluntary environmental innovations. We find that innovations which...

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...

Register data are known for their large sample size and good data quality. The measurement accuracy of variables highly depends on their high importance for administrative processes. The education variable in the IAB employment sub-sample is an example for information that is gathered without a...

The present paper examines the wage effects of continuous training programs using individual-level data from the German Socio Economic Panel (GSOEP). In order to account for selectivity in training participation we estimate average treatment effects (ATE and ATT) of general and firm-specific...

In many econometric applications it is unclear from the very beginning whether a parametric functional of a continuous regressor should be specified as a linear, as a higher order polynomial or as a piecewise linear. Nonparametric estimators can provide relevant information as they are a...

We present a new method for imposing and testing concavity of a cost function using asymptotic least squares, which can easily be implemented even for cost functions which are nonlinear in parameters. We provide an illustration on the basis of a (generalized) Box-Cox cost function with six...