Um dem steigenden Wettbewerbsdruck standhalten und den veränderten Kundenwünschennachkommen zu können, wandeln sich viele Industrieunternehmen vom klassischen Produktzumumfassenden Lösungsanbieter, d.h. zum Erzeuger und Vermarkter so genannter hybriderProdukte.In diesem Arbeitspapier stehen...

Recent research has led to the empirical regularity that rm growth rate distributionsare heavy tailed. This nding implies that a few rms experience spectaculargrowth rates and decline, but that most rms have marginal growth rates. The literatureon high growth rms shows that high growth rms are...

Using a vertical differentiation model, we investigate the product quality strategiesof two competing firms maximizing market shares. The rms are facing variable costs ofquality improvement and choose their prices under the constraint of nonnegative prots.We show that in equilibrium there is no...

We consider the effects of product market cooperation on R&Dinvestment, profits, consumer surplus and welfare. We show that though R&Dinvestment, consumer surplus and social welfare may be higher or lower underproduct market cooperation than product market competition, industry profit isalways...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of technological opportunities on the innovation activities of firms, depending on their absorptive capacities. The importance and impacts of the ability of firms to use external knowledge sources were inquired especially for external knowledge...

Discretionary disclosure theory suggests that firms incentives to provide proprietary versus non-proprietary information differ markedly. To test this conjecture, the paper investigates the incentives of German firms to voluntarily disclose business segment reports and cash flow statements in...

One might easily gain the impression that the academic work of Professor Erich Guten-berg, whose centenary provides the occasion for this lecture, is outdated and has lost touch with contemporary economic theories of the firm. However, this impression would be wrong, as this paper demonstrates...

This paper studies organizations with autocratic decisionmaking.

This paper investigates how patent applications and grants held by new ventures improve their abilityto attract venture capital (VC) financing. We argue that investors are faced with considerable uncertaintyand therefore rely on patents as signals when trying to assess the prospects of potential...

While several plots of the aggregate age distribution suggest that rm age is expo-finentially distributed, we find some departures from the exponential benchmark. At thelower tail, we find that very young establishments are more numerous than expected,but they face high exit hazards. At the...