The paper uses a new German employer survey on wage setting practices to analyze incidence and sources of nominal wage rigidity in services vs. manufacturing. We observe that wage freezes are significantly more frequent and wage cuts less frequent in services. Reasons preventing wage cuts...

This paper aims at providing business survey analysts with simple econometric tools to quantify qualitative survey data. We extend the traditional and commonly applied method proposed by Carlson and Parkin (1975) to capture observable survey respondent heterogeneity. We also discuss...

This paper derives a three stage Cournot?oligopoly game for product innovation, expenditure on introducing the product and competition on the product market. Product innovation is assumed to increase consumer utility but is effective only if the innovating firm invests in marketing, so that...

In order to assess the productivity effects of information and communication technologies (ICT), regressions based on cross?sectional firm?level data may yield unreliable results for the commonly employed production function framework. In this paper, various estimation biases and econometric...

Using newly available data at the firm level, this study provides convincing evidence of the importance of financial constraints in explaining the timing of innovations in the German services sector. Based on a dynamic model of firms' optimal R&D behavior under financial constraints, we estimate...