This paper analyzes the persistence of firms' exporting behavior in a panel of West German manufacturing firms. Dynamic binary choice models allow us to distinguish between true and spurious state dependence in firm performance. Using random effects models as well as a recent fixed effect...

In this paper, substitutional relationships between capital, labour, material, electricity, and fossil fuels in German producing and service sectors are estimated using a translog cost function. Estimates are based on a pooled time-series cross-sectional data sample for the period 1978-90 and...

This paper examines the effects that purchased services and imported intermediate materials have on the labour demand for different skills in the manufacturing sector. We derive and estimate a factor demand system based on the generalised Box-Cox cost function nesting both the normalised...

This paper shows that earnings losses after unemployment increase with age. First, older employees start out with relatively high earnings in comparison to employees without employment interruptions several years before the non-employment spell. This earnings advantage turns into a strong...

Labour market reforms that are designed to stimulate labour supply at the lower end of the wage distribution can never be precisely restricted to affect only the target group. Spillovers to and feedback from other segments of the labour market are unavoidable and may counteract the direct...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 2000 to 2006 we analyze the determinants and labor market effects of educational dropout. In addition to classical variables like family background and occupation, we examine noncognitive skills and Internet use. Noncognitive skills...

This paper provides firm-level evidence for the relationship between the age structure of the workforce and the adoption of new or significantly improved technologies in service sector firms. Furthermore, it closes a research gap by analyzing the joint impact of the age of the workforce and the...

This study tests for financial constraints on R&D investment and how they differ from capital investment. To identify constraints in the access to external capital, we employ a credit rating index. Our models show that internal constraints, measured by mark-ups, are more decisive for R&D than...

This paper examines return predictability when the investor is uncertain about the right state variables. A novel feature of the model averaging approach used in this paper is to account for finite-sample bias of the coefficients in the predictive regressions. Drawing on an extensive...

In this paper we use a simple bureaucracy model of fiscal illusion to analyze the impact of intergovernmental grants on the cost effciency of local jurisdictions. We find that a higher degree of redistribution within a system of fiscal equalization or an increase in the amount of grants received...