International standards have the potential to both promote and hinder international trade. Yet empirical scholarship on the standards-trade relationship has been held up due to some methodological challenges: measurement problems, varied effects, and endogeneity concerns. We are able to surmount...

We use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 to show that personal relationships which individuals maintain for non-economic reasons can be an important determinant of regional economic growth. We show that West German households who have social ties to East Germany in 1989 experience a persistent...

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to better understand the management challenges facing managers in small growing firms. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical data have been collected in Sweden through structured observations (approx. 20,000 min) of the working days of six top managers in...