Successful innovation is a precondition for economic prosperity. While various potential determinants of innovative activity have been considered, little empirical evidence is yet available for the influence of firm governance issues. This paper aims at filling this gap in the literature by...

This paper studies the effect of trade facilitation on vertical firm structure using plant-level data from Switzerland. Based on the Business Census and the Input-Output table, we first calculate a binary measure of vertical integration for all plants registered in Switzerland. We then estimate...

To explain organizational decisions in multistage production processes we assume a production process with one producer and two suppliers of which one is the firm's direct supplier and the other one is the supplier of the supplier. The firm decides only on the organizational form of her direct...

International offset certificates have systematically traded at a lower price than European Union Allowances (EUAs), although they are perfect substitutes. Firms therefore had a strong incentive to use the cheaper certificates up to the maximum quantity fixed by the regulator. This study...

This theoretical paper explores the impact of gender diversity on team production. The key assumption is that men derive utility from signaling high ability to female colleagues. The analysis shows that some gender diversity maximizes expected team production if (i) men and women have similar...

Delegated contracting describes a widely observable vertical contractual relationship where a top principal (program designer) hires an intermediary to offer a predesigned screening contract to a downstream agent who should produce a quantity depending on his true marginal cost type. The...

Whenever a central government faces a sub-unit in financial distress, the unpleasant question arises of whether to assist the unit or not. On the one hand, resisting to bail out the unit may lead to default or bankruptcy, which could be very costly both economically and politically. On the other...

We propose a method to estimate the capitalized value of the architectural design quality of a neighbourhood. Our economic design premium is identified by spatially differentiating property prices and design quality within neighbourhoods and comparing the differences across neighbourhoods. We...

We estimate the effect of the UK Stamp Duty Land Tax on household mobility using micro data. The UK (until 2014) provided an ideal setting to explore the impact of housing transfer taxes on mobility decisions. This is partly because the stamp duty liability is quite substantial, at least for...

When should one pay for delivery of a good if there are no institutions? We suggest to break up the transaction into many small rounds of investment and payment. We show that the efficient investment can be implemented in an epsilon-subgame perfect equilibrium for any given epsilon if the invest...