We study a two-stage R&D project with an abandonment option. Two types of uncertainty influence the decision to start R&D. Demand uncertainty is modelled as a lottery between a proportional increase and decrease in demand. Technical uncertainty is modelled as a lottery between a decrease and...

Allowing for three labor market settings (perfect competition or right-to-manage bargaining, efficient bargaining and monopsony), this paper relies on an extension of Hall's econometric framework for estimating simultaneously price-cost margins and scale economies. Using an unbalanced panel of...

This discussion paper resulted in a publication in the <I>Journal of Applied Econometrics</I>, 2013, 28(1), 1-46. 10.1002/jae.1256 Embedding the efficient bargaining model into the R. Hall (1988) approach for estimating price-cost margins shows that both imperfections in the product and labor markets...</i>

We study different determinants of real-life R&D decisions within a net present value framework. Besides entry threat, Bertrand competition and multi-stage R&D with an abandonment option, our model includes demand uncertainty, modelled as a lottery. A lottery becomes more divergent when the...

We use unique rich data for German manufacturing enterprises to investigate the product diversification – firm performance relationship.We find that an increase in the degree of product diversification has a negative impact on profitability when observed and unobserved firm characteristics are...

This study investigates business services firms that (start to) export, comparing exporters to firms that serve the national market only. We estimate identically specified empirical models using comparable enterprise data from France, Germany, and the UK. Our findings show that exporters are on...

We use the unique recently released German business services statistics panel to conduct the first comprehensive empirical study on the relationship between exports and profitability for the business services sector. We document a negative profitability differential of services exporters...

This study reports results from an empirical investigation of business services sector firms that (start to) export, comparing exporters to firms that serve the national market only. We estimate identically specified empirical models using comparable enterprise level data from France, Germany,...

While the role of exports in promoting growth in general, and productivity in particular, has been investigated empirically using aggregate data for countries and industries for a long time, only recently have comprehensive longitudinal data at the firm level been used to look at the extent and...

Using quantile regression and a rich cross section data set for German manufacturing plants this paper documents that the impact of plant characteristics on export activities varies along the conditional size distribution of the export/sales ratio.