Being able to manage growth, improve results, change behavioral attitudes and innovate are legitimate aspirations in the search for an improved performance, even though they are not the only ones. At the beginning, it was believed that productive specialization and scale would be sufficient to...

This study assesses the impact of the single market program (SMP) and the European monetary union (EMU) on the German banking sector. As a main result, the introduction of the EMU can be assessed as more important for the German banking system than the SMP because of the relative liberal...

This paper reviews empirical and theoretical work concerning the relationship between innovative activities of firms and the dynamics of industries. Stylized facts on industry evolution and the analysis of industrial dynamics in general are a first building block. This discussion just reflects a...

A parsimonious theoretical model of second degree price discrimination suggests that the business cycle will affect the degree to which firms are able to price-discriminate between different consumer types. We analyze price dispersion in the airline industry to assess how price discrimination...

Do firms employing undocumented workers have a competitive advantage? Using administrative data from the state of Georgia, this paper investigates the incidence of undocumented worker employment across firms and how it affects firm survival. Firms are found to engage in herding behavior, being...

European Union countries have implemented widespread reforms to product markets in order to stimulate competition, innovation and economic growth. We provide empirical evidence that the reforms carried out under the EU Single Market Programme (SMP) were associated with increased product market...

This study characterizes the corporate leniency policy that minimizes the frequency with which collusion occurs. Though it can be optimal to provide only partial leniency, plausible sufficient conditions are provided whereby the antitrust authority should waive all penalties for the first firm...

Price-fixing is characterized when firms are concerned about creating suspicions that a cartel has formed. Antitrust laws have a complex effect on pricing as they interact with the conditions determining the internal stability of the cartel. Dynamics are driven by two forces - the sensitivity of...

Price dynamics are characterized when a price-fixing cartel is concerned about creating suspicions of the presence of a cartel A dynamical extension of static models yields the counterfactual prediction that the cartel initially raises price and then gradually lowers it An alternative...

There exist a vast number of studies on the banking industry. However, the insurance industry remains relatively unexplored. Increasingly, Austrian insurance institutions are becoming important as financial intermediaries in the domestic market, and - based on proximity advantage - also in the...