We analyze the allocation of ownership in a franchise system by focusing on location-specific characteristics of the outlets. This study uses a comprehensive data set on McDonald's restaurants in Germany to investigate the drivers of the decision on whether outlets are companyowned or...

Contract law has long been a favorite area of study among comparative law scholars. Economists have posited that contract institutions play a central role in economic development. Yet, in sharp contrast to the state-of-the-art in other fields (such as corporate law and bankruptcy law), the...

This paper examines the concept of a promise, an essential tool for Islamic financial transactions that has facilitated the development of structured Sharī‘ah-compliant financing arrangements and mitigated much of the risk that Islamic financial institutions encounter. The study explores...

This paper analyses market efficiency and the role of the virtual location in digital markets using a data set containing more than 23,000 price observations from the online market for contact lenses as well as detailed information about online retailer and product characteristics. The data...

Most of the literature on retail fuel markets find high-frequency and asymmetric price cycles. This is typically explained by the model of Edgeworth price cycles. A key element of this model is that prices fall to marginal costs during a cycle. It seems challenging to address this assumption...

This study addresses the determinants of time-to-licensing, defined as the elapsed time between the disclosure of an invention and the signed licensing contract, and its impact on the commercial success of the licensed inventions from public research. Using a dataset containing detailed...

Previous studies of organizations have highlighted that leadership and organizational performance have a strong and long-term impact on employee behavior in private firms. In this study, we analyze whether similar effects can also be observed in academia by examining the commercialization...

Subsidising research networks has become a popular instrument in technology policies, driven mainly by expected positive spillovers. In particular, the stimulation of R&D co-operation between scientific institutions and industry is considered as most promising. In the context of policy...

Literature has identified formal and informal channels in university technology transfer. While formal technology transfer typically involves a legal contract on a patent or on collaborative research activities, informal transfer channels refer to personal contacts and hence to the tacit...

In recent years, firms have increasingly contributed to and been confronted with a patent landscape characterized by numerous but marginal inventions, overlapping claims and patent fences. Literature suggests that both the fragmentation of ownership and the threat of a firm's patent applications...