Statistical cluster techniques are applied in the development of two new taxonomies of manufacturing industries. The first focuses on the distinction between exogenous, location dependent comparative cost advantages, such as the relative abundance of capital or labour, and endogenously created...

This paper aims at establishing the existence of systematic differences in the nature of competitive strategies available to individual firms across industries. By means of qualitative content analysis, we extracted a matrix of 76 industries times 12 strategies reported as being characteristic...

In 1996, Becker and Gerhart noted that much of the work on human resources (HR) and performance had traditionally been conducted at the individual level of analysis. However, in the 1990s, empirical research on HR and performance increasingly moved to the plant/unit and firm level of analysis...

Seit Jahresbeginn 2006 steht der US-Dollar unter Abwertungsdruck. Dadurchverändert sich die internationale Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Ländern und Unternehmen. Dieser Beitrag zeigt kurz verschiedene betriebliche Währungsrisiken auf und geht dann auf langfristig relevante ökonomische...

The increasing overload of information that bothers people is affecting businesses on online job boards as well. Although there is no doubt about the benefits of those platforms, companies are threatened to get lost in the sheer mass of similar advertisements. Considering the background of the...

We use a unique longitudinal dataset that tracks the exporting behavior of Belgian manufacturing firms between 1997 and 2009. We ask how slack resources, including financial and human resource slack, influence firms’ exporting behavior. Our findings suggest that both types of slack resources...

Sprachwissenschaftler haben das 'Humankapital' zum Unwort des Jahres 2004 erklärt, weil - so die Kritik - der Begriff den Menschen auf eine nur ökonomisch interessante Größe reduziere. In ähnlicher Weise mit der wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung des Menschen für das Unternehmen wird argumentiert,...

We present an equilibrium-search model with heterogenous workers whosearch for a job in one of two sectors and who lose part of theirskills during unemployment. We show that an import tariff increasethe wage and the employment prospects in the protected sector. Thisresults in a labor market...

Since the introduction of the European CO2 emissions trading system (EU ETS), the development of CO2 allowance prices is a new risk factor for enterprises taking part in this system. In this paper, we analyze how risk emerging from emissions trading can be considered in the stochastic profit and...