"We examine the effect of financial dependence on acquisition and investment within existing industries by single-segment and conglomerate firms for industries undergoing different long run changes in industry conditions. Conglomerates and single-segment firms differ more in rates of...

What determines the life-cycle of businesses? Exploiting unique firm-level panel data on internal organization and innovation we establish three key sets of stylized facts to inform recent theories of firm life-cycles. First, life-cycle effects are driven by startups, not by new establishments...

This paper examines the impact of vertical integration on the dynamics of performance over the automobile product development lifecycle. Building on recent work in organizational economics and strategy, we evaluate the relationship between vertical integration and different performance margins....

The past decades witnessed a broad trend towards flatter organizations with less hierarchical layers. A reduction of the number of management levels in a corporation can have both positive and negative effects on firm performance with the net effect being theoretically unclear ex ante. The...

Industrial clusters develop regionally along the industry's lifecycle and typically exist over many product generations. In order to maintain their innovativeness, they have to develop and adjust along the industry lifecycle. We conduct 142 depth face-to-face interviews in clusters across two...