Export activities have become crucial to firms' competitiveness, with determinants of export performance being a challenging field of research, since there is no consensus regarding the explained and explanatory variables or on the econometric methods to be used. Using a panel data of Portuguese...

Studies about innovation find evidence of a positive relationship between technological advancement and firm performance, in particular when the innovative effort is continuous. This paper aims to further the analysis on the duration of R&D investment at the firm level. The contribution of this...

This paper investigates the presence of spatial spillovers in firms' productive (in)efficiency. For this purpose, a spatial stochastic frontier model is specified and estimated, accounting for spatial dependence and persistent and transient (in)efficiency. This approach is applied to a panel...

This paper analyzes the differences in labor demand and labor turnover between family and nonfamily firms. The majority of firms in modern economies and, therefore, also in Germany are family controlled. These firms seem to have better employment performance than non-family controlled companies....

I investigate how political uncertainty influences corporate investment decisions employing a unique panel dataset of German manufacturing firms. I use data on firms' self-reported investment realizations, plans and revisions. The firm-specific user cost of capital captures the current...

Using microdata that serve as the foundation of the ifo Business Climate Index, Germany's leading business cycle indicator, I examine whether political uncertainty influences how firm owners perceive their present state and future development of business. I use state election months as...

We investigate the effect of uncertainty on investment. We employ a unique dataset of 25000 Greek firms' balance sheets for 14 years covering the period before and after the eurozone crisis. A dynamic factor model is employed to proxy uncertainty. The investment performance of 14 sectors is...

This dissertation consists of six self-contained chapters that are related to the behavior of firms and politicians in a broader sense. After an introduction to the topic, the first part of the dissertation elaborates on how institutional and political framework conditions influence the behavior...

Theoretical models point at various channels of the impact of inflation on corporate investment. This article attempts to answer the question what are the direction and strength of this possible impact examining the relationship between corporate investment and inflation on the sample of 21 OECD...

Theoretical models point at various channels of the impact of inflation on corporate investment. This article attempts to answer the question what the direction and strength of this possible impact is, examining the relationship between corporate investment and inflation on the sample of 21 OECD...